Today I’m going to pretend that everything is alright. I’m going to smile a lot and give high-fives. I’m going to text some people I have done a poor job of keeping in touch with. I’m going to focus on the positive. I’m also going to BULLET POINT THE FUCK OUT OF LIFE TODAY! Join me, won’t you?

• I finally bought my tickets for Circa Survive today. Afterward, I turned around and said to Glenn, “If you’re planning on going to the Circa Survive show at Mr. Small’s, you better get your tickets soon. It could sell out.” He mumbled something like, “I’ll be sure to.”
• This is the start of the third week in my new/old desk location and I’m still loving it. Now that I sit near Amber¹ and Todd, we talk about really interesting things like THE REAL WORLD. Seriously, Glenn was off last Friday so wewere able to freely converse about past Real World seasons for nearly an hour without Old Grouchy Glenn here to convo-block us. I’m sure everyone around us was super excited to relive the time Ruthie nearly drank herself to death in Hawaii.
  • Speaking of, this season of The Challenge was one of my favorites. So much drama!
  • This reminds me of all of the convos I used to have with Bob at my old job about The Real World, and how annoyed Collin would get. God, memories!!
• I love Easter because of shit like this:

• I was excited last week because it felt like spring for real for one whole day and I thought to myself, “Woo! The season of gratuitous ice cream cone photos is upon us!” And then it snowed for the next two days.
• Last week, I was walking aimlessly around Pittsburgh on my break, like I often do, I passed a woman who was screaming, “A PERSON CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH!” to the guy she was with. I was like, “AMEN SISTER” except that I only just thought it because ew, talking to people. But then I passed them again a few minutes later and it became clear to me that she was pretty unhinged. She kept shrieking, “STAY AWAY FROM ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!” and then she would let forth this blood-curdling, hysteric eagle-scream. I was like, “Why does that sound familiar—-oh.” It totally reminded me of Erin and Henry: the Early Years. I didn’t get a FUCK who saw me raving like a lunatic back then. Thank god I’ve acquired a veil of self-awareness, huh Henry? Henry?
• I spent all of this time regaling Henry with the time in high school when I discovered that “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was a Yes song. For years and years, I was sure it was the Police and could never understand why I couldn’t find it on any of their albums every time I went music shopping. And then I looked over at Henry and he had this glazed look in his eyes. Ugh, sorry I wasn’t talking about THE SERVICE or grocery shopping.
  • Speaking of grocery shopping! Henry roasted brussels sprouts, beets, and kohlrabi for me on Saturday and it was like falling in love with him all over again. I never ate vegetables, not really, until we started dating and he was like, “WTF kind of vegetarian doesn’t eat vegetables” and I was like, “The kind who doesn’t eat anything that isn’t delivered to her front door?”

• OMG OMG we have a new person here in our group to help us out once Amber-About-to-Pop is away on maternity leave. After Amber came back from the interview two weeks ago, she said to me, “I think this one is the best fit out of all of them. She actually reminded me of you.” I got super excited and cried, “REALLY?!” to which Amber said, “Well, I mean…she probably doesn’t have a DEVIL RUG…” Anyway, her name is Allison and she started last Monday. She’s only 21! I was really excited when I found out and told Glenn as such. “Finally, someone here I can relate to!” I said. “Oh, don’t even try to pretend you’re 21!” Glenn spat. But I just mean that we are probably interested in the same things! I made the mistake of telling Glenn that I couldn’t wait to ask her what kind of music she listens to, but he got to train her before I did and as soon as she sat down behind me, he blurted out, “SO WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DO YOU LIKE?!” and I whipped around so fast to glare at him. Then he had the audacity to ask her if she likes Pierce the Veil!
  • For the record, she does not know who they are.
  • On Allison’s fourth day here, we had cake and milk for O Pregnant Amber. Allison and I were loitering togetheroutside of Mitch’s office, talking about being vegetarians. When I told her that I have been a vegetarian since 1996, she exclaimed, “So like what, since you were five?!” THIS GIRL CAN STAY.
    • Wendy is super jealous because now my attention is divided.
  • I told Amber the Abandoner that I’m so excited to teach Allison things. “Yeah, you’ve been a big help with training her, thanks!” she said. “Oh, no. I’m talking about COOL THINGS, not dumb work stuff.” Amber just rolled her eyes. She does that a lot.
• I found this old picture of Blake and Chooch and got all of the mushy-feels:

• Apparently, I chirp “Oh for fuck’s sake” so frequently, that Henry now tries to guess when I’m going to say it so he can say it first.
• Last week, Nate told  Amber “Baby’s Gender? Surprise Me!” G. that she should name the baby Cucumber if it’s a girl, because she was eating a cucumber at the time. But I thought Nate was suggesting that Amber name her cucumber, which made me blurt out, “I had a pet orange and French fry in high school! Marcus Orangerelius and Frieda.” And then when Nate was like *slooooooow nod*, I tacked on, “I swear I had real friends, too.”
• Call me from a blocked number so I know it’s real, amirite.
• I’m really mad at my job, currently, and it is making me act like a cry baby.
• <3H<3 (Full disclosure: This photo was from when I was sucking up to Henry because I wanted a ride to work. Spoiler alert: I took the trolley that day.)

That might be all she wrote. If she thinks of anything else, she will come back and add on.

I have really been phoning it in lately. Yes, I’m aware. But this is not going to be the post that changes any of that. Just kind of stating the obvious I guess.

Here are some pictures of things that happened this past week.

We went rollerskating on Saturday. I really thought that this was going to be the winter where we would get back into the skating game, but it just wasn’t to be. Our weekends have been pretty full, but when I realized that nothing was going on Saturday, I told Henry that this is what we would be doing and, as he tucked his dick between his legs, nodded obediently. Kara and Harland met us there, so that was fun even though I barely got to talk to Kara because hello, I’m too busy being a goddamn dream on wheels out there, OK?

And Henry was sad because he apparently hurt his foot in another pallet-related accident (WTF goes on at the Faygo Plant!?) so he did not rent skates and instead leaned against the wall and watched everyone else whirrr past under the flashing lights. God, cry me a river of Dorothy Hamill tears.

We are definitely done with Neville Rollerdrome and have chosen Romp-n-Roll as our new headquarters. It’s a pretty great spot and just feels more roller-rinky than Neville. The sad reality is that really no matter where we go, we’re going to be terrorized by kids who can’t skate, so I’m trying to just get over that.

I got to talk to Kara for about five minutes when I finally came off the rink for hydration. Apparently, she had Harland in the side room, which is kind of like a mini-rink except that there are pool tables in the middle. Either way, it’s a good spot for non-skaters to practice, so she was trying to help Harland when Professional Skater Henry stepped in and began instructing him, because even when he’s not skating, he has to remind everyone that he’s a better skater than me, god fucking dammit.

Highlights:

• Some dickhead came out onto the rink with candy and spilled it, which subsequently led to people skating over bits of Skittles and grinding it into the floor. So the DJ stopped the music, turned on the lights, and told everyone to stop where they were. He explained the sitch and asked us if we could all take a few minutes to look around where we were stopped and see if we could find any candy shards and if so, to please dump it into the hands of a skate guard or take it to the DJ booth. This way, they wouldn’t have to shut down the session for however long it took them to clean the whole rink. I was so excited because I FOUND ONE RIGHT WHERE I HAD STOPPED! It was orange and I almost fell when I went to pick it up, but it was worth it for the opportunity to triumphantly glide over to the DJ booth and announce with authority, “I FOUND THIS.” On my way there, I passed Henry in the snack room and shot my hand up in the air so he could see my candied treasure. Later, he told me he didn’t know what I was doing. Fuck you, Henry.
• Not falling.
• No terrible Goldilocks issues with the rental skates.
• The DJ starts out the session with some old school jams, and that makes me happy. Of course, it veers into hott urban joints after that, with some T.Swift sprinkled in, but what can you do. I also appreciated that he’s on a first-name basis with the singers. He’d be all, “Next up, here’s Sammmmmmm” and it would be some Sam Smith song (they all kind of sound the same to me). Or “Heyy! It’s time for some Ed.” And then Ed Sheeran would soundtrack my hazardous laps around a rinkful of birthday party-goers who were having their hands held by their parents WHO DID NOT HAVE SKATES ON. Ugh, people shouldn’t be allowed on the rink without skates. Wait…hold on…

Lowlights:

• PEOPLE WERE ON THE RINK WITHOUT SKATES! And one woman had her BABY STROLLER OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RINK. I couldn’t even wrap my head around this. If this was Neville, she’d have had a major whistle blown at her skanky suburban ass.
• When Henry didn’t know I found one of the candy perps. :(
• Their rink policing SUCKS. I told Kara I want to be a rink ref and she was like, “But then you’d have to yell at people all day” and I was like, “INORITE!? AND BLOW A WHISTLE.”
• Some little bitch in a Snow White dress nearly killed me probably the same amount of times she watches Frozen in a week. I honestly almost shoved her once because BITCH MOVE OUT THE WAY.
• People are allowed to have their phones on the rink and every time I saw someone take a selfie-in-motion, I had to fight the urge to shoulder them into the wall.
• Also, some people would congregate in small, idle groups on the rink, not even near the walls, but right in the prime skating path, and they would just stand there and TALK. Like they were IN A PARK PAVILION. Or near a WATER COOLER. Unacceptable.

After skating, we ate dinner at some old folks joint in Glenshaw called The Boulevard and it was really quaint! Totally one of those places where all the old people have standing relationships with the waitstaff.  “Why haven’t we ever eaten here before?” I wondered out loud, and Henry answered, “Because we’re never in Glenshaw?” And Henry was one of the youngest people there!

Then I was just sad that we’re not regulars anywhere.

Sunday chin-scratches. I had a dream a few weeks ago that Marcy had a horse penis and also had this huge growth on her stomach which turned out to be a pug. Like, an entire dog just hanging off her stomach. I guess it’s because I’ve been so stressed out because she’s old and has breast cancer and everyday I’m like IS SHE BREATHING!? And Henry will calmly answer, “Yes, Erin. She was also trying to sleep but your big mouth just woke her up.”

The other night, Marcy was sitting on the couch with us and I kept saying, “I love you!” to her in a panoply of accents and strangulated voices. “Aren’t you glad that I keep all of my voices on lock while I’m at work so that I can come home and unleash them all over the house?” I asked Henry.

“Yeah. Totally,” he sighed.

Henry bought me this shirt at the Pierce the Veil show a few weeks ago. <3

Ironing Perler bead creations: What is Henry’s life.

Behold the most majestic ground-sheath. Chooch has come to terms with it and even helped me unroll it. Henry was just like, “I hope Marcy pees on it.” Oh OK, as if you’re not going to take your clothes off and roll around on this when no one’s home, Henry. That’s not something you would do AT ALL.

Chooch hijacked Henry’s phone last night when he stupidly went to bed early, and hoo boy did we have some fun. Mostly we just terrorized people on Instagram. Chooch went to his favorite YouTuber’s Instagram page and we left him all kinds of love notes from Henry (jrobber1 if you feel some sick need to follow him on there). Then, after posting several selfies, Chooch started following horrible people on Henry’s behalf.

This morning, I was talking to Henry on my walk to the trolley and he blurted out, “You two are assholes.” I tried to play dumb, which is usually is pretty easy for me, because I’m naturally dumb, but he barked, “Oh don’t play dumb. I know what you guys did. I knew as soon as I opened Instagram this morning and Kim Kardashian’s boobs were everywhere.” Also, his alarm didn’t go off, so we’re getting blamed for that now, too.

I just started cracking up over this while I was getting stuff off the printer, because not only am I prone to laughing alone at  my desk, but also while traveling to other parts of the floor. And it’s probably not even really that funny, but you should know that lately I have been fluctuating between laughing until I have to puke, to crying until I have to puke. OK, that’s not just “lately.” That’s “always.”

Speaking of hyper-psychotic laughter, we’re all moving our shit to our new spaces today and I was like, “Hmm, why the hell do I have a sewing kit in this box?” And then I remembered someone gave it to me when I was making my Glenn garland for my office Christmas tree a few years ago. O MEMRIEZ.

I was just finishing up this Dahmer painting to join the others in the set* when Chooch strode over and said, “I want that. Can I have it? PLEASE LET ME KEEP IT!”

“What, why? It’s—”

“Jeffrey Dahmer, I know! And I want it,” he cried. So, I guess Dahmer is going on Chooch’s wall and I’ll just make another.

*Fish and Manson so far—I’m trying to paint as many as I can so I can incorporate them into new cards for my serial killer card shop. I need a new “everyday card” line.)

****

In other news, one of my co-workers, Marlene, was moving into her new desk yesterday and suddenly screamed. Her scream was then followed by an accusatory, “ERIN!!!” I slowly got up from my desk and said, “Yeah, I think I know what this is about….” Apparently, there was a  leftover bloody finger in one of the drawers from last Halloween’s scavenger hunt. So Marlene suggested that we put it in Debby’s drawer. Today, it was back in Marlene’s drawer and she immediately accused me! I was like, “I SWEAR I DIDN’T DO IT!” so the next obvious suspect in line is always Glenn, who wasn’t here yet. Marlene marched over to his desk and put it in his jar of peanuts.

“Great, he’s not going to think that I did that AT ALL,” I said. And of course, I got blamed for it. I told Marlene and she was like, “I hate to break it to you, Erin, but everyone ALWAYS thinks it’s you!”

“BUT LOOK AT THIS FACE!” I cried, pulling it into the most angelic visage of innocence I could muster.

“THAT is why we always think it’s you!” Marlene laughed.

And then I went into Wendy’s office and she was crying because her sister sent her some sad song and then I started crying because I saw Wendy crying and tears are contagious.

Speaking of crying! I’m going to see Mike+the Mechanics tonight and I said to Glenn, “When they play Silent Running tonight, and YOU KNOW THAT THEY WILL PLAY SILENT RUNNING TONIGHT, I’m going to cry so hard.”

“Good to know,” he mumbled. He’s just mad because he had to take my late shift tonight. SO THAT I CAN CRY AT THE MIKE+THE MECHANICS SHOW!

Friends, I am more Sybil than usual. I think I need some sort of Mexican home remedy.

That may or may not be “Friday” in Icelandic. You never know if the things you learn in Internet College (i.e. Google) are True Story or not. But I thought that hey, maybe putting a weird-looking word in the title would entice people to click. LINGUISTIC CLICK BAIT. 

Anyway, all that memory lane-tripping over the last week has left me exhausted. Let’s unwind with some good old-fashioned bullet points and iPhone pictures, because that’s real life, you guys.

• The weather was disgusting on Sunday. Look, I’ve done pretty well with not bitching and moaning about winter this year, but when it’s March and still looking like a hobo’s dirty Slurpee outside, I AM GOING TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I don’t think the sun came out once all day, and we were treated with some sickening, wet snowfall. Or, as those in the meterological know say: “wintry mix.” So, basically perfect weather to meet Chris and Monica at Sonic to try the new chocolate jalapeno milkshake. If you’ve ever been to Sonic, you know there’s no “inside” to it. You park and your food is brought out to your car. Not very conducive to meeting friends and hanging out on a wintry mix-y day. But, that’s what we did. Henry was like, “You fools can enjoy yourselves standing in the parking lot like rejects; I’m just going to sit in the car and scroll through Facebook even though I only have approx. 40 friends so probably my feed hasn’t changed.”
  • My jalapeno was bigger than Chris’s jalapeno. Monica took a sip of Chris’s shake and cried out, “I got a hot piece!” which actually made Henry laugh audibly from inside the car. Who knew Henry sometimes pays attention to what THE GIRLS are talking about?!

• During our milkshake suck-fest, all of us realized that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so we finished our milkshake appetizers and went down the street to Kings, where Henry actually decided to sit at the same table as us, and Chris agreed to let the ghost of Henry’s grandma use her as a host in order to teach Chooch how to knit. So, just your normal lunch convo, really. Then Monica* was like, “Chooch, follow your dad into the bathroom and take a picture of him for all of us to see” so Chooch did it and we all died. Always so much fun hanging out with those two!
  • *True or False?

• In order to distract myself on Mournday, Janna and I went to the Hollywood Theater to see What We Do In the Shadows, which was a really smart move because I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard in a movie theater and I REALLY NEEDED THAT. Janna brought a 4-pack of mini-wine with her so that made it even better. And we managed to not slip on ice and break ourselves because WINTER UGH DIE on the way there and back.
  • I highly recommend seeing this movie, which should mean a lot because I rarely tell you guys to watch things other than music videos. If you like vampires, mockumentaries, The Real World, and the New Zealand film industry, then you will probably like this movie. If I didn’t personally find movie reviews to be so boring, I would tell you more about it but instead I trust that you will just click the link up there. I was still laughing about it the next day at work and I TRIED to tell Glenn about it because I’m a very sharing person, but he was just like, “Oh OK.” Maybe if it was a silent film about boring Glenn-like people doing boring Glenn-like things, like talking about gas fireplaces and looking at clothes dryer manuals, his interest would have been piqued.

• Still can’t believe Parks and Recreation is over. #RIPHarris
• No one has given me their hometown “travel” pieces yet so I’m going to make up my own.
• I always have pretty fucked up dreams (and nightmares—I LOVE HAVING NIGHTMARES) but lately they have almost all involved work people. I think on some subconscious tier, I must be more stressed out than I actually feel about all of the changes happening at work. I mean, some of them are really good changes, but still—it’s a change and changes and me just don’t agree. Even David Bowie’s “Changes” makes me feel stressed out on some level EVEN THOUGH I LOVE THAT SONG.
  • In one of my dreams, Sue (the director of the department) and I killed a man with our bare hands in Wendy’s backyard. Sue said good morning to me the next day and I had immediate flash backs and then proceeded to not make eye contact with her for the rest of the day. SUCH INTIMACY. Later in the dream, I had the guy’s head and it turned out he was still alive and he bit my arm really hard so I ripped his jaw off and if I stop typing and let the room grow quiet, I can still hear all of the popping and cracking of cartilage and bone.
  • In another dream, it turned out that my co-worker Cheryl and her husband were actually not married for all these years, so they decided to get married for real and I went to the wedding, which was in a huge cathedral that also had parts of Cheryl’s house in it. I was sitting at the top of a wide, red-carpeted staircase with another co-worker who works remotely from West Virginia and who I have little to no contact with; her knee hurt her so she asked me to slide down the steps with her, so I did, and I went too fast and slid across the floor in my dress and landed in a heap at the feet of a bunch of wedding attendees, so that was awkward. Then Amber-With-Child was there, minus the -With-Child, and she made me take a tour of the dessert tables with her, which literally meant walking through a spiraling corridor full of CAKES AND COOKIES AND CHOCOLATES but every time I would try to take something, she would tug me along. Finally, I snagged something and it turned out to be chocolate-covered paper. Then some girl appeared and kept quoting my blog at me and I was like, “OK that’s great” but she kept saying, “I MEAN AMIRITE?” and I was like “NO I DON’T RECOGNIZE THIS!” And then I was in Cheryl’s kitchen but everything was built for giants and I kept trying to climb up onto a stool but I couldn’t make it. When I told Cheryl the next day In real life, she asked, “But why was my kitchen built for giants?” I looked at her like she was idiotic and said, “Because you and your husband were giants!” God. Try to follow along, Cheryl. She’s the worst, amirite?
    • Meanwhile Henry had a dream that some girl fell down a well and Bradley Scott Walden from Emarosa went down to save her. I was like, “PLZ TELL ME I WAS THE GIRL!?!?”
• The other day, I brought the latest issue of Alternative Press to work and made Glenn look at posters of Pierce the Veil with me. He made some insensitive comment about how they look like hooligans and/or misfits and I just sighed and said, “I like them because they’re Mexican.” Glenn said, “Oh, are they really?” and his tone suggested that maybe that would sway his opinion. “Well….they’re from San Diego” I said with a shrug.
• Rosetta Stone’s “Adrenaline” just came on Spotify and I instinctively reached up to touch my spiked choker of yesteryear. #GothMemories #BlackBible
• Two weekends ago, we were having Weather and Henry was outside shoveling. Hot Naybor Chris asked Henry if we needed any bread, and Henry said we needed hamburger buns, so Chris came back with like 4 grocery bags full of various breads, even a container of croissants and a King Cake. Maybe that love isn’t unrequited after all!
• I decided something pretty major last week: The best Full House episode is the one where they lose Michelle at Disneyworld and the worst Full House episode is the one where they find Michelle at Disneyworld. Runners-up for best are probably the one where Joey is teaching Michelle to ride a bike and she crashes into a bush, followed closely by the one where she runs away and then Joey, Jessie and Danny show up at her friend’s house with all her shit and tell her to have a nice life. But then it ended up being reverse-psychology and she came back home. :(
• “Move your damn tombstone,” Glenn said to me at work, which is pretty normal.
• I fell down the 90s R&B rabbit hole last night (which is a ridiculous sentiment because I live in that rabbit hole) and while poor Henry was trying desperately to sneak away to bed, I was taking him on a tour of videos from the Jason’s Lyric soundtrack.  JASON’S LYRIC WAS MY EVERYTHING IN HIGH SCHOOL YOU GUYS. I saw it at least three times in the theater and that is what taught me what TRU LUV is all about: finding a guy whose brother is embroiled in THUGLYFE and then SAVING HIM (but not the gang member brother–that guy can eat it). This movie came out when I was dating my first real love, Justin Kail and basically he was Jason and I was his Lyric, which is pretty obvious, but then he broke up with me and I would listen to that soundtrack while crying hot, psycho tears like a true Girl, Interrupted. Meanwhile, the letters F, M and L were undulating in Henry’s pupils as I selected the first video: Sovory’s “Love Is Still Enough” which was fan-made and featured pictures and illustrations of all types of black couples, and I would turn every so often and lip-synch into Henry’s face, which he loves. It’s his favorite thing about me, maybe second only to when I eat popcorn and wipe my buttery fingers on the lenses of his glasses.  But then I put on the holy grail of the Jason’s Lyric soundtrack: YOU WILL KNOW, BY BLACK MEN UNITED!! This was like a veritable wet dream for a yo-girl like me in 1994, like my version of porn; all of these hot R&B singers in their prime, hoo-boy. (Of course, back then, my favorite was El DeBarge.) Anyway, right as the video started playing, I said wistfully to Henry, “Man, back then, I could name after last motherfucker on this song. I bet I don’t even know half of them now” right before I began crying out name after name in a breathless frenzy, like I was being timed. like there was a big prize at the end, like I’M A KNOW-IT-ALL. Henry looked more disgusted than impressed, which hurt.

• Then we migrated up to bed, where I continued YouTubing 90s R&B hits on my phone, like Usher’s first big single “Can U Get Wit It.” “I knew about Usher before other white people,” I explained to Henry, because sometimes my megalomania cannot be contained. This inspired a tangent about MTV Veejay Ananda Lewis and how I hated her because she started out on BET’s Teen Summit, and BET was obviously playing Usher from the beginning, you know? Because that’s the shit that BET did. So then Ananda got all big-time and left BET for MTV, where, a few years later, she introduced a video from Usher’s second album and referred to him as a brand new artist WHEN SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT WAS BULLSHIT. While I was spitting about this, I had pulled up her Wiki page and started relaying to Henry some facts about her sorry ass. “I can’t believe it doesn’t say anything about her lying on MTV about Usher,” I murmured. “Wow. Maybe you should add that fact yourself,” Henry suggested in the bored voice that I would probably be using if I was watching a silent film about boring Glenn-like people, doing boring Glenn-like things, like talking about gas fireplaces and looking at clothes dryer manuals.
  • A few minutes later, I blurted out, “I can’t believe I didn’t end up as a teen mom.” Henry looked at me all confused and asked why I would say something like that. “BECAUSE OF ALL THE SEX JAMZ I LISTENED TO BACK THEN!” God, Henry. Go collect some clues with Cheryl.

OK Blog/Only Friend. I’m out.

Today’s All About Barb post is going to be an extravaganza of bullet points, links, and photos. Because there is just so much to remember!

Things I’ve Learned About Barb

• Hates most collars, scarves, and other such fashionable garrotes
• Confuses giraffes and zebras
• Pumpkin Spice Lattes make her cry, “Holla!”
• Proud Functional Fixedness sufferer
• Hates Bill Paxton with the blinding fury of 87 million suns
• Is confused by non-American cuisine and doesn’t even know what CILANTRO is, GOD BARB
• The only thing she likes about the Philadelphia Flyers is the broad who used to sing God Bless America at their games a long time ago
• She “doesn’t do” gum
• She has feelings for Pascal Dupuis (he’s a PITTSBURGH PENGUIN if you didn’t know)

Favorite Barb Memories

• When she was super into watching a live feed of this local eagle’s nest. There were three eggs and the whole city was on “egg watch” basically, but Barb was like a maniac over it, like she’s related to them, like she was waiting for her eagle grandchildren to be born. God, get over it, Barb. Anyway, she was all stressed out because it was predicted that the day that the eggs would start hatching was when she was going to be en route to Toronto to visit her brother. “I just know an egg is going to hatch when I’m not around to watch,” she cried. AND SURE ENOUGH, AN EGG HATCHED ON THAT DAY! I saw it on Facebook and was filled with glee that Barb missed it. I got to rub it in her face when she came back to work and it was DELICIOUS. (I mean, the “in-your-face”-isms, not the eagle egg.)
• The time she admitted to me that she almost prevented me from getting hired here, after telling our boss, “Oh, I don’t know. She has a little kid and will probably be calling off all the time.” You know how many times I’ve called off since getting hired in April 2010? TWO TIMES. IN YOUR FACE, BARB!
• When the first thing she did after getting a smartphone was download a fart app.

• When Barb yelled at Lee (to her defense, he made an ill-timed, insensitive joke about the Paper Clip Situation at work, which I’m not sure I’ve ever explained on this blog, but it’s really stupid and petty and has Barb and I completely up in arms as it’s mostly directed toward us). Because of this, Lee started calling her Darth Rile and asked me to Photoshop a Darth Riley. Barb of course thought this was great and was trying to email it to her brother, but accidentally sent it to one of the Firm partners in Spokane, who is probably in his 80s and his picture tells us that he probably hasn’t laughed since 1959, presumably while watching Leave It To Beaver. Her face was so red, and so was mine — FROM ALL THE HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER HEATING IT UP. I had to actually get up and run away from my desk because I was losing it so bad. She thought she may have been able to recall the email, but I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope he saw it. I actually hurt my back from laughing!
• Last August, when we let Barb out of our sight for like 3 minutes at Kaitlin’s wedding only to have her rush back over to us with her arm hooked around a man. crying, “LOOK WHO I FOUND! JOE MACHI! FROM LAST COMIC STANDING! ON NBC!!!!” Then she practically chucked her phone at me and made me take her picture with him. It all happened so fast, you guys.

• All the times Barb would fuck up the daily Roll Call emails that the whole department counted on her to send. Sometimes she would have the date wrong, or someone would forget to add their name to the calendar if they weren’t going to be in, and then Barb would look like an asshole. My favorite was the time she tried THREE TIMES to send the correct Roll Call and fucked up each one and then everyone had a filed day sending her corrections, so finally she sent this bitter email to the department: “My apologies for the mix up…..I shall strive to do better in the future.  Thank you all for the heads up on my errors.” And, if you know Barb, you can imagine that she probably broke her keyboard after pounding out that reply. I got so much glee out of ridiculing her on her Roll Call inadequacies and even now, imagining her laying awake at night, feeling the pressure to send a flawless Roll Call email, is making me crack up so bad at my desk.
• When Barb started sending my kid anonymous mail.
• The time Carey offered Barb a box of baked goods, to which Barb responded with, “For future reference, always offer stuff to Erin first.” UGH SHE KNOWS ME SO WELL :(
• When Barb was a part of my Halloween Freak Show desk in 2012!

• The time Barb unwittingly kick-started my apple obsession.
• When Barb held my hand during my first Jury Duty summons.
• This could have been any day, really:

OK, I know I’m forgetting so much and GLENN has done fuck-all to help me with this. So, if you’re a Law Firm person and have a Barb memory to contribute, let me know and I’ll add it here under a special “OTHER PEOPLES MEMORIES” section.

:(

Thank the fucking Good Sweet Brown that it is Friday. This week was a….weird one. Let’s bullet it out.

• I mentioned in passing earlier this week that BARB is leaving the Law Firm. Words cannot express the emotional paralysis I’m experiencing because of this. WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF ME?!?! I suggested that she train Glenn and we all had a good laugh. Who will post passive-aggressive signs in the kitchen when someone leaves their dirty shit in the sink for more than 5 minutes, or send snippy emails to all the right people when our printer gives up the ghost for the 87th time this week or there is an alarming stench emanating from the restroom!? BAAR-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-ARRRRRB, DON’T GO!!!!
  • SPEAKING OF, we were out of plastic spoons in the kitchen for a few days and I kept having to go to a different floor to get some. Then I would come back to my desk and fill Glenn in on my latest quest, because he lives for these updates. When I came to work the other day, this was sitting on my desk, because Glenn apparently IS trying to be New Barb! I t old Amber-with-Child that this means Glenn and I are basically BFFs now. A few minutes later, she asked me where he was and I was like, “I don’t know. We’re not THAT good of friends.”
    • But back to the spoons: to use them or nah? THEY MIGHT BE LACED.

• Several of my friends posted that JNCO is coming back! I was like OMG memories because I used to wear the shit out of JNCO, Stussy, Karl Kani (that was my SHIT), and Cross Colours. I started Googling the other brands and was so stoked to see that they’re all still around, but the Karl Kani hoodies especially made me catch my breath. I kept shoving my phone in Henry’s face so he could really marvel over the Kani signature name plate on the shirts. Henry was like, “Nope. Still don’t remember.”  HE WAS THE GODFATHER OF URBAN FASHION, for Tupac’s sake! I was really going hard down memory lane at this point and asked Henry if he remembered the clothing store Merry Go Round. He said yes, probably just to placate me, and I went on to tell him that’s where I bought all of my yo-girl threads. “Cross Colours in particular had an entire girls’ line of clothes, but I always wanted the boy stuff. Because I was a THUG,Henry.” Henry sighed and murmured, “Yeah. I keep forgetting.”
  • Ugh, why didn’t I keep all those old clothes?! Now I feel sick over this.
• 

• OMG THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER HAPPENED. The other day, Barb was all, “Yo, how far into Breaking Bad are you?” and I was all, “Blahblah blah Jane and Jesse” and Barb was all, “DID YOU NOTICE WHO JANE’S DAD IS!?” And I was like, “What no who?!” and she was like, “He was on some soap opera years ago, I can’t remember if it was Another World or Days of Our Lives, and for some reason all I can remember is that he had a girlfriend named Calliope—-” I cut her off to cry, “EUGENE!?!?!?!? AND HE WAS AN INVENTOR! AND WHEN HE AND CALLIOPE GOT MARRIED HER DRESS LIT UP!!!”  and then I had to run back to my desk and YouTube it before my head exploded because if there is one thing I fucking go bananas over, it is 1980s-era Days of Our Lives, people. So then that night, I was so excited to tell Henry, but apparently my lead-in was too over-the-top because he thought it was going to be something more amazing, and I’m like MORE amazing? What more could you want? Eugene fucking Bradford is on Breaking Bad!
  • The next day, I told Barb that I watched another episode of Breaking Bad the night before and was so excited to see that it really is him, and I even cried out JOHN DELANCIE! when his name popped up in the opening credits. Then we were talking about Calliope and I mentioned that Arlene Sorkin was like, my style icon as a kid and Barb was like, “Oh I didn’t know that was her name in real life.” I told her that of course I knew her name, because I kept a Days of Our Lives scrapbook when I was in elementary school. Don’t be jealous.
    • Eugene was last seen in Salem in 1989, after which he disappeared in his time machine.
• Yesterday, Glenn was telling campfire tales about the OLDEN DAYS when it was unheard of for schools to have 2-hour delays due to weather. “Except for that one time in the 70s when the rivers froze and the barges couldn’t get through. Schools were closed that day.” Then he and Patrick launched into some sordid conversation about gas fireplaces and I was like, “Where am I? Is this Hell?”
  • Also, Glenn lectured meonnot watering my stupid spider plant often enough. “Look at it, it’s all desiccated,” he monotoned. “MAYBE THAT’S HOW I LIKE MY THINGS!” I cried defensively. Glenn must have just learned the word “desiccate” because he seemed excited to use it. Why couldn’t he have been this active when I was live-blogging our terrible late shift?
    • Barb would never lecture me. Whenever she tries to teach me to do something new (like, use an apple corer or find my way around town), she always swaddles her words in baby’s breath and whatever material the gloves that handle the Stanley Cup are made from, and punctuates it with a reminder that I am a special, special star.
• OK, girl talk: Pretty much have spent all week obsessing over Lynn Gunn’s (singer of PVRIS) relationship with Love, Robot vocalist Alexa San Roman. And thank god, too, because I am so over Whitney and Sada. All they do on Instagram is post club flyers and pictures of their post-workout smoothies!!  So I’ve officially hopped on the fast train to Lynn & Alexa Town. Of course, this obsession is salt/wound, but I don’t care. Last night, I was babbling on to Henry about something that I read about them. “I saw it on the Lynn & Alexatumblr,” I excitedly explained. Henry responded with a stretch of intensely disappointed frowns. “WHAT HENRY?! HASHTAG RELATIONSHIP GOALS, OK?!” Seriously. I wish I could go back to my early 20s and bag a hot lesbian singer in a beanie and then hold hands at Warped Tour. I clearly chose the wrong path. #LESBICORE
  • Thank god Henry is so goddamn patient with me.
• Today I’m wearing a shirt that I forgot I  bought in the junior department of JCPenney’s and apparently it’s a “great color on me.” Sometimes coming to work is a real feel-good experience. And while I really appreciate the compliment, I’mma pretend it was really coming from my figmented girlfriend who sings in a make-believe post-hardcore band. 

Me in my nice-colored shirt.

• The security guard just tromped past my desk with a new security guard who looks like a 1980s serial killer….or Henry in the 90s. I feel considerably less safe.
• All I want to do this weekend is write stories.

HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND, INTERNET BEINGS!

It’s Wednesday, and it all at once feels like “HOW DID WE GET HERE SO SOON?!” and also “WHEN WILL THIS WEEK END?!” Not doing very well as far as “sentence structure” and “cognizant thoughts” go, so let’s bullet point the shit out of today, shall we?

• I’m still on my P.Eugene kick. Last night, I did a Gospel Celebration workout that involved some light salsa moves and I was doing fine until Paul cried, “NOW GRAB YOUR PARTNER!” and I didn’t HAVE a partner because ASSHOLE HENRY wouldn’t get the FUCK off the couch and be a fucking PARTNER for once in his life, so I had to goddamn shadow dance and I was so pissed. Then there was a step that required me to “pivot” and that is how I learned that I’m not capable of pivoting.
  • This morning, I told Glenn that I salsa’d with Paul last night and for a split second, he looked concerned. “WHERE?!” he asked, like he thought I had tracked down Paul and whipped him until he finally did a one-on-one workout with me.”In my living room,” I answered and then he looked relieved. LIKE PAUL COULDN’T HAVE BEEN IN MY LIVING ROOM I GUESS?
  • Obviously.
• Also last night, I made Henry watch the premier of Eye Candy on MTV and he is so hooked, you guys. I CAN’T BELIEVE BEN DIED ALREADY IN THE FIRST EPISODE! Oh shit, I spoiled it.
• Speaking of MTV shows, here is a picture of Henry watching The Challenge last week. It always starts out like, “I DON’T WANT TO WATCH, I HATE THESE SHOWS” and then a few minutes in, he’s making casual observations, like, “I wonder where Evan has been?” and “HOW DOES JORDAN DO THAT WHEN HE HAS A DEFORMED HAND!?” But seriously, this season of the Challenge is painful for my heart. Seeing Diem and Knight on TV was really upsetting, knowing that soon after this season was filmed, they died. Diem says at one point that she wants to win because she needs the money for a surrogate, since her ovarian cancer was preventing her from having children. OW MY HEART.

• I was really excited to do nothing over the weekend. Nothing as in: no painting, etc. Kristy and Janna came over Saturday night and it was RELAXING! We laughed a lot and made Henry bring us drinks and then the house almost burnt down because I lit a super ambitious candle in the bathroom and thank god Henry bought new smoke detectors right before Thanksgiving after 15 years of living in a house without them (when I lived alone I thought they were stupid because they were always beeping so I ripped them off the ceiling) because there was enough smoke to set one of those sumbitches off! Henry and I looked at each and then I immediately shouted, “CANDLE! I LIT A CANDLE IN THE BATHROOM!” One of the soap holders on the sink was completely blackened but everything else seemed OK. It was exciting! Come hang out at my house, where it’s always loud and the possibility of getting charred is a real thing.
• Apparently, we’re doing a Biggest Loser thing in our department and it starts tomorrow. At first I was like, “No” because I don’t want to get weighed in front of anyone (#foreverfat) but then I actually finished reading an email for once in my life and realized that we can keep our weight to ourselves and just use percentages.
  • Whatever that means.
    • There were instructions but I didn’t click the link, so I guess technically I didn’t really read the whole email.
  • I feel bad for the other competitors. Now that I’ve got Paul to the Eug in my life, they don’t stand a chance. Jesus is going to carry me over that finish line. (And probably Henry, too, because I’m sure I’m going to injure myself on the path to the victory.)

• I don’t stay with Chooch anymore for his piano lesson (I think I told you this already, Blog) because I apparently was too much of a distraction, so now Henry and I get to run around town for a full hour and do whatever the fuck we want! Except for basically anything I suggest, because Henry is an asshole. But it was OK for us to swing by East End Brewery last Saturday, because it was HIS idea. God forbid a growler sit empty in our house. He tried to sweeten the pot  by reminding me that Commonplace Coffee shares a space with East End Brewery and now that I’m officially Keurig-free, I’m always in need of more hipster coffee to make Henry’s eyes roll. First though, we went to the East End side of the building and while Henry slurped various beer samples into his mustachioed lips, I must have looked pretty bored because one of the guys behind the counter slid a sample of some dark brown, probably-disgusting beer-stuff over to me. “Here, you need this” he said with confidence, and then walked away. At first, I was like, “Oh really? He’s that sure I’m going to love this that he doesn’t even need to watch?” Ugh, beer experts are their own breed. I took a tentative dip with my tongue and when it didn’t melt off, I went off for a second slightly larger sip. “Oh my god,” I side-whispered to Henry, who was busy pretending like he definitely detected the hidden note of Ethiopian warrior sweat in whatever dumb beer he was sampling. “I like this!” I said with bewilderment. “No you don’t,” Henry argued, turning back to his lame sample and pretending like he has some refined palate and didn’t just eat a package of Slim Jims and Moonpies in the car that morning. But I did, and I told the beer guys this, explaining that I HATE BEER USUALLY. The one guy said he was shocked that I liked it then, but apparently it gestated in some wine cask somewhere, so I guess that did the trick for me. Henry, seeing that I had charmed the guys and wanting to turn the attention back on himself, told them that he would take a mini growler of the beer that I liked, which is appropriately named SKETCHY.
  • I felt really guilty about this, though. Like, almost as guilty as the time I mistakenly made fun of Paul Eugene (before I realized that he is actually awesome and I would follow him into the desert, if you know what I’m saying, and if you do please explain it to me because I just lost myself). You see, this one time…years and years ago (it was 2007, so whatever year-count that would be) Janna, Kara, and I went to a vegetarian dinner at the Bigelow Grill, and there was also a beer-pairing presented by the owner of the East End Brewery himself, Scott. Back then, I had even less tolerance for beer as I do now. I didn’t even like wheat beers or shandies then (YES I KNOW THAT’S NOT REAL BEER), so naturally, when it was time for me to write about the experience, I pulled out all of the meanest, nastiest analogies I could muster. Because you know what jerks do when we don’t understand something. We mock it.  Scott ended up finding my blog post and rather than sue me for defamation, he actually said my XXX-rated review amused him and asked if he could post the link in his newsletter. (God, why couldn’t the Catholic school moms have reacted the same?) So I contacted him through the brewery’s website and ate crow. All these years later! He replied and asked if he could put my apology on the website and I’m like, sure why not?! I can think of worse ways to make an ass of myself.
    • The moral of this story is that sometimes it’s OK to gives things another chance and then OMG admit that you were wrong. Scott and I are basically BBFs now.
      • He doesn’t know yet, but he’ll find out when he gets the other half of the best friend pendant in the mail.
  • Speaking of beer and Kristy, when she came over on Saturday, she brought one of those Rogue beers that I always wish I liked because the bottles are so wonderful (I actually bought one years ago at Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati because the guy on the front looked like Henry). This one was supposed to taste like some kind of lemon donut, but I couldn’t stop feeling like I was swishing a mouthful of Lysol. Two hours later, Henry was like, “JUST GIVE ME THAT GLASS, I KNOW YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FINISH IT” and I was like, “YES I AM BECAUSE I THINK I LIKE IT NOW.” Sometimes it just takes me a long time to like something, OK? Look, it took me 10 years to like Henry.
• I found this tracklist for a mixtape I made in….1999 or 2000? I haven’t listened to 90% of those songs probably since then. (Totally unapologetic about that Fuel song. That was my JAM. I’m going to put it on right now and I guarantee that I will get choked up. It reminds me of bartending school!)
  • A shocking amount of things remind me of bartending school, which is odd considering it was literally only a 2 week course.
  • Yep. I’m choked up. AND IF I CAN’T FIND MY WAY BACK TO ME…

• Chooch has been such a little fucking brat all week and then it dawned on me last night that it’s because he needs a haircut. When his hair gets all shaggy-like, he turns into a FUCKING MONSTER OMG HELP ME (he and Henry are currently arguing as I type this). So tomorrow he’s going to get his hair cut and I’m super stoked about this. TIME TO GOOGLE PICTURES OF DAVID BECKHAM.
  • That’s my go-to hair model for Chooch’s head.
• In the same tin I found that mixtape tracklist, I also found these old Penguins tickets and it made me feel so warm and fuzzy. My family had season tickets back in the day but then my mom stupidly got rid of them about 10 years ago. BECAUSE SHE HATES ME.
  • There were also a shitload of concert tickets in there, and one was from a White Stripes show we went to in 2002 at Metropol, which I’ll never forget because I was like, “WE HAVE TO GO SEE THIS BAND THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SO GREAT.” (Clearly this was before they became MTV darlings.) I was bored out of my mind. They didn’t impress me then, and they don’t impress me now.
  • Speaking of the Penguins and Fuel, I can’t listen to “Hemorrhage” without thinking of them losing in the Stanley Cup finals of 2008. We usually keep the X (Pittsburgh’s alternative station and the official station for the Pens broadcast) on in our room during hockey season, and I remember waking up the day after they lost the Cup and “Hemorrhage” was on. I started crying so hard, like I had just broken up with a guy. (Or, you know, Henry.) Jesus, I was WRECKED!
    • You would think I’m a huge Fuel fan after all  this but I swear I’m not. I saw them live once ever, at one of the X Fests, and the singer (Brett) was so awful and obnoxious. Once was enough for this broad.

• WHAT AM I TO DO WITH, DO WITH, ME?! LET THE SUN FALL DOWN!!!!
• I want to have some kind of monthly thing at my house, like a book club but not a book club because I don’t have the downtime to read one book a month (this makes me sad, too). Maybe like…a QUILTING BEE? I don’t know. Local friends, wanna come hang out at my house once a month under the pretense of “doing a thing”? Even if we just gossip about Henry. That could be OK fun. No OMG wait I’m so dumb, the answer was right in front of me—LET’S HAVE A PAUL EUGENE WORKOUT NIGHT!!
• Hey look, Henry actually framed some of my posters and hung them! But they’re slightly uneven and he still hasn’t fixed that yet.

Well guys, the Law Firm Biggest Loser challenge starts tomorrow, and PE can’t work my ass out if I’m sitting on it. SO SAY GOODBYE.

Today is the last day of 2014 (newsflash for those calendar-ignorant motherfuckers out there) and I was just struck with an extra dose of blogging panic because I need to purge all this December bullshit before it’s too late and I get shot in the neck with a poisoned dart and then dragged to whatever the blogging version of Guantanamo Bay is….Dooce’s basement? I shudder to think.

• First, let’s talk about Secret Santa! I had A-ron this year and I was super-stoked about it and went completely overboard because Secret Santa-shopping is fun as fuck. I mostly got him toys and candy and novelty socks, but the best part was in the wrapping, which I can’t post here because it all involved pictures of various people around the law firm and I’m trying to not be a reckless blogger, remember? Meanwhile, my Secret Santa was KILLING IT. I was convinced that it was Nate, because every day, I was getting very Erin-specific notes and Kit Kats, and not too long ago, Nate asked me what my favorite candy was. AND I SAID KIT KATS. Plus, I figured it had to be someone that I talk to everyday and/or am Facebook friends with, because the details were on point.

The TMNT figures made me really lean toward Nate, but then toward the end, Barb was like, “FYI it’s not Nate” because she had to deliver something on behalf of Nate and it was not to my desk. But then I started thinking, about how my gift wasn’t there that day when I got in, but then it showed up later, AFTER MEAN AMBER HAD ARRIVED FOR LATE SHIFT. How could I have been so blind!? All of my notes were specific to things that she is forced to talk to me about EVERY DAY. (Except the Pens—that’s a mutual topic for us.) So yes, it was definitely Mean Amber (or Amber Claus) and she told me that Nate only asked me what my favorite candy was because she told him to. WELL-PLAYED. God, Secret Santa is so fun!

• In other Christmas news (j/k, this whole post is Christmas nonsense), Chooch joined chorus this year and has consistently failed to bring home pertinent information that involved parents might need to have. Such as: when recitals are and what he needs to wear for said recitals and what time he needs to be at the school before these supposed recitals. A few weeks ago, I got a text from Henry at 5:20 (10 minutes before I was done with work) to tell me that our son had just informed him that he had to be back at school by 6:00 in order to get ready for the 6:30 recital. That jerk is so goddamn lucky that my job is in such close proximity to our house and his school. So yes, we got him there in time and got to watch him sing a medley of Christmas carols. When that was done, the music teacher took the stage to announce that while the band was setting up, several students were going to come out and play a piece on the piano. I was like, “Oh great, more unbridled talent. How will we stand it” when suddenly, the first kid to come back out on stage was my own goddamn son. My stomach flip-flopped, my entire body spontaneously clenched. This was a big surprise to me. Chooch got behind the piano and knocked out a few bars of “Deck the Halls” and, while not without flaws, it wasn’t too bad for a kid who barely practices and has a laid-back punk keyboardist as his teacher. I mean, I knew that he had been working on this song but I thought it was something that he was playing for the kids in music class or something, not in front of all of these parents. And then when he finished, he promptly took a bow. The people behind us were fucking loving it and kept shouting, “IS THAT YOUR BOY? IS HE YOURS?” like we just witnessed a young Amadeus up there and not an 8-year-old rushing through Deck the Halls from spotty memory. But goddammit, I was proud of that kid. Especially afterward when he joined us in the crowd and kicked back in a chair like his solo was no big deal. I asked him if he was nervous and he looked at me like I was absurd. “No. Why would I be?” We are so not alike in that regard.
•   
  • Also in CHORUS NEWS, I was just getting on the trolley two Mondays ago when Henry texted me and said that Chooch had called him from school, that he had his chorus field trip that day and was supposed to wear a white button-down shirt since they were going to be performing at the courthouse downtown, and that he HAD a white shirt on, but MOMMY made him take it off. Fucking little liar. You know what he was wearing that day, because he insisted on dressing himself? An over-sized CAT T-SHIRT. Again, this kid is fucking lucky that I work downtown and was able, with Glenn’s permission of all people, to run down the street to Burlington and buy a stupid white shirt for my lying sack of a kid, and then later in the morning, I had to run up to the courthouse which I actually know where that it is thanks to JURY DUTY 2011 when my co-workers did everything short of aiming beacons into the air to make sure I knew where I was going. I found the spot where all of the other school buses were dropping off the band kids, etc., so I stood there waiting for Chooch’s school, which of course passed right by, with Chooch, wearing a baggy cat t-shirt and a shit-eating grin, waving to me from the window. So I had to follow the bus around the entire courthouse because the music teacher apparently is as woefully unprepared as me, until finally the bus pulled over and the teacher jumped off and ran inside the courthouse, I guess to check in. All of Chooch’s dorky friends were waving and pointing to me from the bus, and I’m like, “I gotta get back to work, put your damn window down” and Chooch is like, “What? Why?” and I’m really getting irritated at this point, at him, at the situation, at all these dumb kids laughing and waving at me. It took FOUR KIDS to help him get his dumb window down, at which point, I balled up the Burlington bag, chucked it through the window and growled, “BREAK A LEG!” I found out later that he was pissed that I didn’t stay to watch his performance, are you fucking kidding me? Maybe if I hadn’t wasted my entire lunch break plus some SHOPPING IN A SCARY STORE and practically casing the courthouse like a creep, I could have stayed.
  • Between all of this, the Open House fuckarow, and god only knows what else we’ve unknowingly missed, his school probably thinks he has alcoholics for parents.
• I didn’t think Henry and I were exchanging gifts this year since we did the whole Philly weekend thing two weeks ago, but then he told me he had something for me so of course I begged him on Christmas Eve to let me open it. I could tell right away that it was a CD and you guys know that I love music so much but I still started to feel disappointed because CDs are every day purchases, you know? #spoiledbrat But then I opened it and realized that it was a Mike + the Mechanics CD with tickets to the show stuffed inside! YOU GUYS. This was one of the few times I didn’t have to feign appreciation! I was actually going to go to this show alone because Henry seemed really off-put by the ticket prices (when you’re accustomed to $10-$20 small band shows….), but then he bought two tickets for the same seats we had for the Goblin show and I am so incredibly stoked! My Pappap loved this band. I don’t even care that the original singers aren’t going to be there (well, one is dead…) because Mike Rutherford will be, and hopefully my Pappap’s spirit.
  • Also, Henry’s lucky that there were tickets inside, because he didn’t get the album that has “Silent Running” on it. What an asshole.
• Before going to my dad’s house for a Christmas visit, we had dinner at Pan Asia with other loners/non-Christmas types. It was nice because the place wasn’t dead. But I made the rookie mistake of sitting across from Chooch, who just got a camcorder and is already calling the (zero) subscribers of his (non-existent) YouTube channel “demon cakes.” There’s an approx. 7-minute video of me sipping my oolong tea. It’s riveting. Henry has already made a gif out of it.

• Hanging out at my dad’s on Christmas night was really nice and we all laughed a lot. On the way home, I was thinking about how nice this Christmas was — no tears, no ungratefulness. And then my phone buzzed with a Facebook notification. My friend Jenny had tagged me in a comment that she left about my serial killer cards. She’s always pimping my shop, so I didn’t think anything of it at first, until I noticed that the thing she was commenting on actually WAS one of my cards….only with some other person’s logo on it. So I went to the actual page on FB that this was posted on, and it turned out that they had taken EVERY ONE OF MY CARDS and put their logo on it. From what I could tell, they weren’t selling them, but they were taking credit. And they were getting A LOT of great feedback from people who were commenting, liking, and sharing. We’re talking 100s of people. This guy, whose name I refuse to mention, has over 30,000 likes on his page. These are all people who could have been potential customers, but instead, they think he’s the “brilliant” one churning these things out. I know it’s a really weird/dumb/sketchy thing to be involved in, but I have literally cornered the market on serial killer greeting cards since 2007. And I take pride in that. So first, I commented on one and, even though my immediate reaction was to fucking go off, I tried to stay rational and explained that I was the creator of these cards, here’s the link to my shop, etc. Then I started replying to some of the comments too, saying things like, “Thanks! I made this card. Here’s the link to my shop.” I tried to send this guy a direct message and couldn’t find the option to do. Then I noticed all of my comments had been deleted. He fucking blocked me. I found his website and contacted him through that; meanwhile, I had posted on my personal and business Facebook pages and a lot of my friends and customers were going after him, only to have their comments deleted and get blocked as well. Some lucky people were even getting personally harassed by him. I couldn’t even believe the balls on this guy. He was so mean and cocky. He told my one friend that he was trying to enjoy Xmas with his family, so what’s her beef. WELL THAT IS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DO TOO! Oh my god. Then he and Henry started messaging back and forth and he flat out told Henry that his girlfriend “found” my cards on the Internet and since I didn’t get “permission” from the inmates to use their pictures (are you fucking kidding me), that it was OK for him to steal from me. Because my ideas and the time I put into creating these cards don’t mean shit without BTK’s seal of approval, I guess. Then he replied to my email and basically tried to bully me into giving him a cut of my card sales because, and I quote: “I have 30.000 followers and you have 200. Who are you?” And then he attacked me on my business page, basically saying that just because I “steal” inmates’ pictures and cut and paste, doesn’t make me an artist.  It was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to reason with this piece of shit, but luckily Facebook came through in less than 24 hours and took down all of my images from his page. We’re protected under basic copyright laws, but you better believe we’ll be registering for an LLC, which I never thought would be necessary before since we don’t really sell  that many of these things and it’s certainly not our bread and butter. I mean, Henry and I both have full-time jobs. I’m not sure how I would feel if I made enough money off serial killers to quit my day job, anyway. I haven’t heard from this guy since Facebook stepped in (although the next night, he “liked” my non compos cards FB page….and I have a feeling it’s not because he wants to kiss and make up). I just have a feeling this isn’t the last I’ve heard from him, but I’ll tell you — I have never been so thankful to work at a big law firm.
  • Not to be corny, but the best thing about all of this is that so many of my friends, and their friends, and past customers totally had my back. They defended me, they hijacked this guy’s hashtag, they reposted on their own FB about what he was doing, they tipped off their mutual friends who also liked this guy’s page. It was just really, really nice to not be in this alone. Octavia even started sending messages to the people who had liked his posts that used the images of my cards, since he had blocked her from replying to their comments. And now I’m officially friends with one of my favorite repeat customers, Polly! I’ll take my 200 friends over his 30,000 followers (which he probably paid for) any day.
  • The worst part was that I let this guy get under my skin and into my head and spent the rest of the weekend questioning my validity to the point where I wanted to just close my shop altogether.
  • Also, it wasn’t about the money. It was about pride. I created these and he was taking credit. Do you know how nauseating it was to see people giving him praise for something that I made, something that came out of MY head? I was shaking so violently Thursday night that Henry had to tell me to sit down and he handled it from there.
  • In his email to me, he stated that he writes to all of the “big name killers” and that Dennis Rader probably wouldn’t be too happy knowing I was using his picture, but he spelled his name “Radar.” And then he did it again on mu Facebook pages, and Henry said that he spelled it that way in a message to him, too, which makes me laugh. It was everything I could do not to type “I HAVE A DEATH ROW PEN PAL TOO!” Ugh.
• In better Christmas news, Henry framed my Goblin and Circa Survive show prints! And then he didn’t hang them the way I wanted. But still. At least they’re framed and not rolled up somewhere.

***

Overall, 2014 wasn’t too bad. Sure, it had low points, what year doesn’t? But it also brought a lot of laughter, amazing shows, and new friendships. And I get to end it by going to the hockey game tonight with Henry! So for that, I can’t hate on 2014.

• I was on late shift two days in a row last week, so it was later in the morning when I took the trolley to work. Henry has been driving me to work on my last several late shift days, and I’ll tell you: the one thing I miss about working late shift every day is the cast of unsavories I got to mingle with on the trolley. Really never thought I would say that, but my regular morning commute is full of boring business-people quietly reading their Kindles or listening to podcasts. Occasionally there is that one douchebag who thinks it’s appropriate to loudly speak on their cellphone the whole way into town, and also now that it’s winter, it’s your average Snot Symphony up in there. ANYWAY!! For last Thursday’s late shift, I got on the trolley at 10:30 and an older lady reading the Bible promptly sat down next to me while the trashy girl in front of me answered her country music ring-toned phone and promptly started SCREAMING, “YOU SAT THERE CALLING ME NAMES AT FRIGGIN’ PRIMANTI’S! OH, AND NOW I’M A WHORE?!” Awkward. She didn’t look like a whore.
  • The next day, I sat behind a farmer.

• Sometimes Marcy and Chooch really get along great, like when it’s Sunday Donut Time and Marcy skulks around looking for just a crumb, one tiny taste, oh brother can you spare a morsel. So then it’s all, “Aw look how sweet Marcy and Chooch are, everybody!” But then there are the times when Chooch is sitting at the dining room table, doing his homework, and Marcy sits on the table in front of him, stalking the motion of pencil with her eyes, until eventually she can stand it no longer and lunges at the pencil, but then at the last second, right before pencil/paw contact, she’s like, “Fuck it” and goes for his hand instead. This makes Chooch flip out, and he yells at her and tells her she’s a horrible bitch, so then she moves closer and sits down on his homework with her back toward him and this makes Chooch cry out of frustration and Henry has to try to lure Marcy away from him with treats but she’s like, “Hold on, let a bitch get one more tail-whip in here” and she maliciously and stubbornly slams her tail down right in front of Chooch before jumping off the table and eating the treats Henry left in a Hansel and Gretel trail away from Chooch.
• Yesterday, I was texting Henry and autocorrect just changed a word to “BTK.” #HowYouKnowYouTextTooMuchAboutSerialKillers
• If I just let entire Michael Buble video play on YouTube without turning it off. Am I old or nah.
• Today I learned that Barb hates most collars, scarves, and other such fashionable garrotes so I think it’s settled that I’m buying her chokers for Christmas.

• Chooch and I had an ice cream date a weeks ago with Kristy and Sarah. We met at a parking lot near Oh Yeah! Chooch and I arrived first and were promptly berated by two parking lot security guards who were getting paid to remind assholes like me that this lot was for CUSTOMERS ONLY and not fat pigs who were trying to walk a block away to get ice cream on a cold November night. The problem was that I was unable to back my car out to leave because so many yuppie fuckknobs were pulling into the lot because it’s connected to A WHOLE FOODS down below. It was basically just a state store and Chipotle on the upper level where we parked, but these faux-cops weren’t having outlanders like us take up a fucking spot in their promised land. So we intercepted Kristy and Sarah right before the parking popo had a chance to berate them too, and totally not suspiciously walked away from our car through the parking lot away from the cops, so it looked like maybe we had changed our mind and were going to spend an hour purchasing beverages to help our children fall asleep faster that night, but really we escaped the parking lot at the other end and basically walked a mile out of the way to get ice cream just so we wouldn’t have to drive around looking for street parking. I was going to draw a map/diagram to show you just how harrowing of a detour it was, but I’m too tired for Exhibits. I’ll just tell you that we had to cross a pedestrian bridge and walk down a dark, deserted road and then climb some steps which put us onto the street that we could have easily arrived at had the parking popo not foiled our plans.
  • We played Scrabble over ice cream. Chooch laid down the first word, which was “ego.” Now, I’m not the type of broad who walks around claiming their kid is a prodigy, but in that moment, I was like, “MY KID IS FUCKING BRILLIANT. HE LITERALLY JUST PLAYED EGO.” But then he said, “That’s how you spell it, right? The waffle? ‘Leggo my Eggo’?” So…Meanwhile, Sarah, who is 5, accidentally spelled “tampon” almost. (She was a letter off.) Then we walked back the way we came because I didn’t want to have to walk past the parking lot guards. Kristy was like “Why don’t you just go into Wine and Spirits and but a little bottle of booze, then if they say anything to you, you can show them the receipt” but I said no BECAUSE I REFUSED TO BOW THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS. Instead, we said goodbye to Kristy and Sarah and then Chooch and I slinked back to our car, hunched over, slipping between the front ends of the parked cars and the barrier wall of the parking lot, just so we wouldn’t have to walk out in the open and be all exposed. Like, “HERE WE ARE FELLAS! COMING BACK TO OUR UNLAWFULLY PARKED CAR!” We came home and tried to explain the whole cloak and dagger of it all to Henry, who just smirked at us and said, wait for it, “You idiots.”

• Henry had to work on Black Friday so Chooch and I decided to venture out and try this new sandwich shop that opened up down the street in Dormont. It’s called Parker’s and it’s very close to one of my least favorite places in the world: the dreaded DOR-STOP. The Dor-Stop is one of those mediocre diners that got super over-hyped by dumb Guy Fieri and his lame-o Food Network show. I was really excited to flip that place the bird as we turned the corner to go to Parker’s, which is tiny but has some mighty sandwiches, you guys. And an entire veggie section on the menu! Chooch wanted to sit at the counter, and by doing so, we were pulled into numerous conversations with the proprietor and his people. (One was his mom and she was awesome.) Chooch and I both felt like we were part of a club, and WE LOVE TO BE INCLUDED IN THINGS so Parker’s is basically our new favorite place in the whole entire world. (It helps that the sandwiches were wonderful, as well.) But the best part is that Henry wasn’t there so we have been purposely bringing up Parker’s constantly, just to make him feel bad. (I don’t think it’s working though.) Like last week when Chooch burped at dinner and Henry yelled at him, Chooch was like, “Yeah, but the lady at Parker’s said that’s a compliment to the chef” and I was like, “Don’t bother, Chooch. He won’t understand. He wasn’t there.”
  • On the way home from Parker’s that day. Chooch ditched me while we were crossing the street because he decided he wanted to go a different way but I had already started crossing the street so I screamed and felt so paralyzed until finally I remembered how to walk again and turned around. It was touch-and-go there for a minute. I was so mad at him, but then he tripped on the sidewalk and I was like, “YES! HAHAHA THAT’S WHAT YOU GET!” Then I admitted that I had a crush on Parker. “He had those beautiful blue eyes,” I gushed. “Oh my god,” Chooch muttered. And then and then and then!

• During the evening of Black Friday, Chooch came downstairs creepily wearing one of my old Lip Service skirts from my goth days. (I use that term loosely. I was more like the Mulatto of the goth scene. Parts of me were goth, but other parts of me were blond, overly-social, with a closetful of Contempo. But I just really liked that goth music, you guys.) “Really Mommy?” Chooch asked in that snotty teenaged-sneer that kids seem to acquiring earlier and earlier these days. “You WORE this!?” Yes, and I also had a dress that said “Fuck” all over it.
  • A few days later, and god only knows why, Chooch and I had a legit argument over who was aware of the existence of goths first. He was all, “You wouldn’t even know about goths if I hadn’t told you!” and I was all, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? I met my ex-boyfriend IN A GOTH CHATROOM!” and then Henry was all, “Please stop fighting with the 8-year-old.” I think he was talking to Chooch.
• I’m so sad that next week is the last episode of Serial! I’m not one for podcasts, but like so many other people, I’m obsessed with this one. It’s so fucking intriguing and I know, I know: this isn’t about wrapping everything up nicely, giving the case a Hollywood ending, proving innocence or guilt. But I can’t help but feel strongly that Adnan is innocent. I will admit this to the Internet, I don’t care: I’m one of those people who is very easily swayed and controlled by emotions and feelings over facts and evidence. Like, I’ll find myself yelling at Henry, “BUT HE DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A KILLER! I LIKE HIS VOICE. HE DIDN’T DO IT.” I would make a fucking terrible juror. I mean, all these years later and I still maintain that OJ Simpson is innocent and I will say now what I said to every one of my classmates who booed me when I cheered at the Not Guilty verdict back in high school: someone who was in Back to the Beach could not have killed someone because Back to the Beach is one of my favorite movies.
  • Hey speaking of killers, I got a Xmas card from my death row pen pal the other day and it kind of caught me off guard because I haven’t heard from him in awhile. Maybe almost two years? I admittedly started to pull away from him quite some time ago, way before I even started working at The Law Firm, so it’s been over 5 years since I wrote to him, probably. He just would always ask me to do things for him, place Craigslist ads for private eyes, update his LiveJournal, it was just too much. And then I also had a series of really bad dreams about him too, coming to my house (it was my mom’s house in my dream though; everything always happens there or my Pappap’s house) and seeming all nice at first but then his smile would start to look just a little too sharp , baring just a little too much teeth, and then there’s this moment where we just stand there, frozen, and I turn to run and then there’s a chase, etc etc etc. So yeah, I got that card and was a little frightened, but then I felt guilty for blowing him off. So I went to work and confided in Glenn and Formerly-Mean-Amber. “What did he do?” Glenn asked. “Killed his wife, but he totally didn’t do it,” I casually answered. “And you know this because?” Glenn asked, totally provoking me. “Because he told me….and they never found a body!” I cried defensively. So Glenn and Mild-Tempered-For-Now Amber started to read Greg’s Murderpedia page and almost right away, they both said, “Oh yeah, he did it. He totally did it.”

• Shameless (not self) promotion: I bought Chooch this t-shirt from Abstruse Apparel that features Artifex Pereo lyrics and is also educational because, to quote from their site “it’s about a disorder called Body Integrity, which is a neurological and psychological disorder that makes sufferers feel they would be happier living as an amputee. It is typically accompanied by the desire to amputate one or more healthy limb to achieve that end.” So Chooch and I talked about that and he was like, “Great. I hope no one at school asks me what this means” and I was like, ‘You’re in 3rd grade. If it doesn’t have Minecraft on it, ain’t no one sayin’ shit to you about your shirt.”
• Today, Credit Karma emailed me to tell me that my credit score has gone from GTFO to Poor. #progress

• I found this old picture of Nicotina (Speck, to some of you) on the computer, so Henry printed it out and hung it on the cat wall. Yesterday marked 3 years since she died unexpectedly and I’ll tell you, I miss that furry brat every day. Chooch actually still can’t look at her picture without straight sobbing. I’m not even exaggerating a little bit. That kid’s world was rocked when she died. Speck was the one that Chooch took to immediately once he went from being sluggish newborn to somewhat-alert human. I hope the pictures help him one day, though, like they help me.
• I got an email from Dark Matter Coffee the other day while we were all in the car, going god knows where, and I said, “Just seeing their logo makes me want to cry.” And then as I looked at Henry to say that it reminds me of Riot Fest, I actually did start to cry and Henry of the Cold-Hearted Snake Clan made some disgusted groan and mumbled, “Oh my god.” I can’t help it! I miss Riot Fest and I honestly think about it every single day because I have problems with letting go.

• It’s hard to believe that Christmas card season is almost done for this year. Our shop did well this year! People seemed to really respond well to the new sparkly card stock we’ve been using. I know it’s niche and seems pretty stupid, but these cards are my babies and it makes me feel kind of secretly smug because one of the many career paths my grandma tried to bulldoze for me was a card designer at Hallmark. Can you even imagine? These cards are the one thing that I don’t seem to get burnt out on. Like, I’ll go for months grudgingly going through the motions with blogging (I mean, what? You could tell? Shocker!) and I’ll go through months without picking up my camera or YEARS without dipping a brush in paint, but man—designing cards really relaxes me.
  • So weird, but Janna and I are currently texting right now about getting burnt out by binge-watching TV shows and I admitted that I’m like the only person in the world who didn’t finish Orange Is the New Black because I literally just quit giving a shit halfway through the second season and I think it’s because I don’t like that Netflix does that, just releases an entire season like that, because I need something to look forward to, the way The Walking Dead has given people a reason to finally look forward to the dreaded Sunday night.
• Big ups to Terri for tipping me off to A Pregnant Light, which is currently motivating me to finish this pointless blog post so I can go to dumb bed!
• WE’RE LEAVING FOR PHILLY AFTER WORK TOMORROW! Of course, I work late shift tomorrow, so that means we’re not leaving until after 8:30. But still! I get to see Terri, Christian, Circa Survive, and the Mutter Museum! OK GOODNIGHT!!!

Last night, right as I was falling asleep, “Jackie Blue” came on the radio. Do you know this song? It’s old, like from the SEVENTIES OMG, and it’s by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. I have been obsessed with this song since high school so as soon as it started playing, I cried, “JACKIE BLUE FUCK YEAH!” and started dancing in bed which is something that Henry totally LOVES when he’s already sleeping, but who cares.

“This song makes me think of when I was 17 and went through a phase where I wore shoelaces as headbands!” I laughed, but Henry just mumbled some sleep-stifled sentiment into his pillow, so since he didn’t care to listen to my stories, I am ready to shoot them from my fingertips like smoking words from a phalanges-cannon. His loss is your gain, Blog a/k/a My One True Friend.

• Back when I was 17 and wearing shoelaces in my hair, Lisa and I used to frequent a pool hall called Cue and Cushion. I’m really not sure how this all began, and for as much time as we spent there, we never really got good. Every time I would ever get a ball in the pocket, I would make an obnoxious gesture toward the pocket and say, “Skilllllllls” while every one else would groan, “Shit shot.” There was this one guy we befriended and I can’t remember his name but I can see him very clearly in my mind, especially how his face went from friendly to “You are dead to me” when he expressed interest and I was like, “I am dating a psychopathic fire-starter whom I love very much and will never betray!” Which was actually true. I never cheated on Mike once, yet he would constantly accuse me of. Also, I remember him being in his 20s and I was saving my cradle for Henry to rob at a later date, obviously. BUT I DIGRESS. I would ask Lisa if she remembers his name, but I’m lucky that she even remembers being friends with me back then, let alone some random pool shark’s name.
  • I have a photo of myself with this guy and I’m wearing a striped velour shirt that I bought from Contempo after it changed from Contempo Casuals but before it became Wet Seal. I’m wearing that shirt under overalls because that’s how I did it back in 1997, holla.
    • Speaking of photos, Lisa and I hung out at Cue and Cushion so often (and were probably the youngest people there on most nights), that we became friends with the proprietor, Lou, who hung our senior pictures up on her bulletin board.
• Thinking of Lou got me remembering all of the other mom-types that loved me and Lisa back in the day, like Maryann from Denny’s, who kept a picture of me on her key chain (Henry rolled his eyes at this) and then there was a broad who worked at a diner that we called Home Cookin’ because that’s the generic name that was on the outside of it (it was in a shopping center) but really it was called Russitano’s. We NEVER called it that but then when I met Henry, it turned out his mom knew a bunch of the waitresses there and he would correct me every time I called it Home Cookin’. Probably because he couldn’t stand that he wasn’t included in my antics back then and hearing me calling it Home Cookin’ forced him to think about me having a life that GOD FORBID didn’t include him. Anyway, I can’t remember that lady’s name, but she used to let us go behind the counter and get our own drink refills. God, I miss that. I think it eventually changed to the Plaza Cafe, back when I was 19 and getting grilled blueberry muffins and coleslaw with the aforementioned Psycho Mike and then it moved down the street and now it’s something else but it seems to rarely be open so why bother.
  • And then all of this made me think of the disgusting amount of time my friends and I spent at various diners but mostly Denny’s and how the hell did they never kick us out when all we were ordering was coffee and essentially loitering.
    • One of my favorite Denny’s memories was going there for dinner with Brian, Chooch’s godfather, when we were…20? 21? He saw someone he knew sitting at a booth across the restaurant, so he told our waitress to send that table the sampler platter and to put it on Brian’s check. Because that’s the Denny’s equivalent of sending over a bottle of champagne at a classy restaurant, I guess. Brian spent the rest of our time there waiting and waiting for some acknowledgement from his friend, but then later, some kid that we knew from high school stopped by on his way out and thanked Brian for the nice gesture. The waitress had delivered it to the wrong table and Brian was SO PISSED but I was dying. Then, when we were walking through the parking lot of my apartment complex afterward, Brian tripped over a speed bump and I cried, “THIS IS THE BEST NIGHT OF ALL TIME!” Probably we went inside and sent Janna fake emails from a fictional man named Tyree, because that’s what we did for funtimes back then. I mean, I would never anything like that now.
    • Speaking of coffee, it’s funny to think about how we would go to actual diners and restaurants (like Denny’s and Eat n Park) when we wanted to hang out and have coffee with friends. There were no Starbucks or really any other coffee houses in the suburbs where I grew up that I can think of, aside from Gloria Jean’s in the mall. Which leads me to my next topic…
• Ever since I had Dark Matter coffee at Riot Fest, I have been straight feenin’ for it. I finally buckled and bought a bag of the Mastodon-collaborated coffee, Black Blood. It’s a limited release and aged in Basil Hayden’s Bourbon Whiskey barrels. I’ve been in a Keurig rut for YEARS so this inspired me (Henry) to get off my (his) ass and buy a french press. My first cup of that steaming Black Blood reminded me that Keurig’s K-Cups are essentially the mp3s of the coffee scene, and I’ve gone back to vinyl, you guys. I’m just sorry that I was led astray for so long. Convenience, etc.
• Long-time readers might remember Eleanore, an older broad I used to work with at another job. I found her on Facebook about a year ago, but then I forget all about it until over the weekend, when I fell down the Old Job rabbit hole on Facebook. You know what I’m talking about: you find one person on FB that you used to work and then suddenly you’re scouring their friend list for other co-workers and then you accidentally send friend requests and it’s a whole big thing. Anyhow, I was reminded of Eleanore’s Facebook presence so I was scrolling through her shit and hearing her voice in my head reading all of her status updates out loud and then DYING at the amount of times TINA (OMG TINA HAHAHAHAHA) has posted to her wall saying “Hello dear friend, I miss” but in Tina-type, it’s more like “Hekjllo Dar friend i mis u.” Anyway…it turns out, and this is not funny at all, that Eleanore had a stroke two years and is no longer working. She seems to have bounced back, but that is still really sad and scary. I ended up having a dream last night that I went to visit her under the pretense of caring about her but in reality, I knew that she had three wheelchairs in her house and I wanted to buy one from her. OK, fine, I’ll tell you the truth: at first in my dream, my intent was to STEAL ONE. I have only stolen something once in my life and it was magnet made out of peanut shells that I took from Lechter’s, a home goods store that used to be in the mall. I was around 4 or 5 and I fucking swear to god, I was so racked with guilt after that, that I don’t even take pennies from Take a Penny trays at gas stations, even if I need one. OK, back to my dream. So I was going to steal one of these beautiful wheelchairs similar to the blue one I already have, but then I woke up in real life and forced myself to go back to sleep so that I could finish the dream by offering to buy one. I don’t know if I was successful, because then I was eating an ice cream cone that I didn’t like so my friend Jeannie let me have her ice cream cone, which was PEACH MELBA, so when I woke up this morning, my first thought was, “Wow, I forgot how much I used to love peach melba ice cream when I was a kid.”

And I will end this with a picture of me and Lisa at Denny’s (of which I have many).

(Pictures. Not Denny’s.)

I drank too much after-hours coffee and now I’m wired so here are some things.

• Glory Days. Moonlight. Adventures of Beans Baxter.Emily Owens, MD.
  • What are: TV shows I loved that were canceled.
• Speaking of TV shows, Chooch and I are really into watching The Goldbergs (he said I’m as annoying as the mom, ugh!) and Red Band Society together, so here’s hoping those guys don’t get canceled.
• Barb and I went to the viewing of our co-worker’s mother after work today. On the way back to Barb’s car through the funeral home parking lot, we walked past a frighteningly oldlady struggling to get out of the passenger side of a car. Barb asked her if she needed any help. The oldlady said yes and then reached out for me to help her. ME! Not Barb, but me! So I had to have human contact with a stranger and I was so scared. God damn you, BARB.
  • Somehow, this was my first time in Barb’s car. I’m here to report that she narrates EVERYTHING that is happening while she’s driving. I don’t think it matters if she has a passenger or not.
• Last week at work, someone sent out an email about a free Neil Diamond CD they were giving away which made me nostalgic so I opened up and told Glenn and Mean Amber about how I bought this deluxe Neil Diamond boxed set when I was in high school and then PSYCHO MIKE took one of the CDs during one of our many Sid & Nancy episodes* and I was never able to look at the boxed set again, because knowing that one of the CDs was missing drove me nuts. It’s actually in a box in my attic. I JUST CAN’T WITH THAT DEFECTED BOXED SET, OK.
  • I don’t know why I referenced Sid and Nancy. There were never any drugs involved in our psychotic fisticuffs, unless you count Mike’s prescription drugsand also the brief period we triedto be pot dealers,LOLOLOL.
    • While we were on the subject of Neil Diamond, Amber admitted that she didn’t know who sang her favorite childhood song, but it went something like—-and after two second of her singing, I screamed, “RICHARD MARX!!!!”

• Yesterday, Glenn was listening to fucking Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass” so loud that I could distinctly hear it through his ear buds and if I had any respect for him prior to this, I would lost some at that moment. Ugh, that song. Just ugh ugh ugh it all the way to hell.
• I made myself popcorn tonight, which entails me over-popping the bag so that the middle becomes a charred brick with some unscathed popped kernels clinging to it. Then I spray it handsomely with Pam. Suddenly, after 13 years together, Henry has a “problem” with this. Like he has just realized now after all this time that my popcorn preference is offensive and I’m like you know what? How about stop trying to change me, man? I’ve been eating burnt, Pam-spritzed popcorn for fucking ever and I won’t let some righteous male try to control how long I cook my corn in the microwave. Fuck off. I AM WHO I AM. And that’s evidently a person who just really loves the synthetic aftertaste of cooking spray on her tongue.
  • My crazy aunt Sharon is the one who got me hooked on Pam because she would always use that on popcorn in lieu of butter when I was a kid, because she was forever on a diet. The taste of Pam reminds me of sleeping over my grandparents’ house, having my back scratched by my grandma while watching Empty Nest. THOSE WERE THE DAYS.
• I’m trying to convince Chooch that pilgrims are fictional. Shockingly, it’s not going very well. The internet makes it so hard to lie to kids these days!
• Unpopular opinion: I really dislike the current season of American Horror Story. The wholefreakshow/clown thing is something that is so dear to my heart, and AHS’s depiction just isn’t doing it for me. I’m still watching, though. If only to mock Kathy Bates’ bizarre Fargo/Pittsburgh hybrid accent. But if she throws an “n’at” in there, I’m out.
  • “N’at” is Pittsburghese/Yinzer-speak for “and that.” It was recently voted the worst American accent! Because it is! And no, I don’t speak like that.
• I’m totally watching the video for Richard Marx’s “Hazard” right now. Wasn’t that a huge deal when it debuted on MTV?
• So, I’ve been watching “The Affair” on Showtime and I love/hate it. I absolutely hate everything about the main guy, and the main broad’s voice and lips drive me nuts. And it has me convinced that Henry is having an affair (much like when Mike was killed on Desperate Housewives and I was so sure Henry was going to get shot and I didn’t want him to leave the house anymore). But I can’t stop watching. I keep making comments to Barb about Henry having an affair and she gets all mad and flustered and yells, “HE IS NOT CHEATING ON YOU! WHEN WOULD HE HAVE TIME!?” Wendy was mad because it took Henry an entire afternoon to text her back the other day. I told Barb about this and then I said, “You know why he didn’t text her back right away? BECAUSE HE WAS TOO BUSY WITH HIS AFFAIR!” And then Barb was like ^&%*&%&(^(*&*(((@@#$$.
• ENDLESS SUMMER NIGHTS! I have officially fallen down the Richard Marx rabbit hole and IDGAF.
• DON’T WORRY: I didn’t forget about that giveaway I said I was thinking about having. It will probably be the week of Thanksgiving, where blogs all over the Internet use that holiday as an excuse to triple their page views.
• My brother told me that our mom has recently brought out a painting I made for her probably 7 years ago and is now displaying it on the mantlealongside one of my old grade school photos. The last time I was at her house (god, over 4 years ago) I was looking for something in the kitchen and saw that very painting stowed away in a cupboard. And I remember when I gave it to her (it was a Xmas present), she very sarcastically said it was wonderful. So, this is interesting to me. I guess on one hand, it gives me hope that she still has some emotion and maybe she possibly misses me. But on the other, I’m not getting my hopes up because it’s a toxic cycle. I asked Henry if he thought she would ever start being a mom to me again and without hesitation, he said no. No sugar-coating when it comes to this topic.
  • I try not to whine about this topic, but sometimes the need presents itself.

Um…on that bitter note. I think maybe I should quit while I’m ahead! Tomorrow, I should hopefully have PART 2 of Heini’s Cheese Chalet for you to gloss over with bored eyes. It’s been pretty hard to put Corey’s and my giddiness into words!

And here are some pumpkin spice bullet points!

• Hey, speaking of pumpkin spice, I’ve divorced that shit for maple. I mean, I still love savory pumpkin things (Henry just made an amazing pumpkin soup last week), but I’m kind of like, “Get the fuck over yourself, pumpkin spice.” Especially latte-wise. It’s maple or nothing for me these days. I see that Starbucks has jumped on the maple latte train, but they can GTFO because their maple latte is an embarrassment to the hot tree-nectar I had in New Hampshire last year.
  • I’m still trying to find a pumpkin beer that I can drink without cringing though.
• I cut my hair the other night. Not drastically, but about a good inch. (Just my longer layers.) I was just sitting there alone, the only one still awake in the house, and I started to feel an anxiety attack coming on and when that happens, there are a few things that help: ripping up papers, breaking glass, or cutting hair. I opted for the hair, because I didn’t have any papers on hand that weren’t Chooch’s and I didn’t feel like cleaning up glass.
  • God, there is something so cathartic about hearing scissors crunch and slice a chunk of dry hair.
  • The next day, I texted Henry and told him I cut my hair. “I know,” he replied. “I unclogged the sink.”
    • Nothing toes the line between bohemian bourgeois and mental patient quite like cutting your own hair.
  • The only people who have noticed have been all boys.

• It was picture day for Chooch yesterday and he was mad that I made him wear his cat bowtie, which he’s worn before but I guess picture day is a different story. I’ll know for certain when we get the pictures back if that little jerk kept it on or not!
  • Speaking of Chooch, he joined chorus. The first song they’re learning is America the Beautiful, but when he sang it to us, it was to the tune of O, Christmas Tree. Because that is his default tune, apparently. (Honestly, he uses that tune anytime he doesn’t know what else to do.)
• Sometimes in the morning when I take the trolley to work, there is this guy on there who is DISGUSTINGLY SICK. I mean, this has been going on for weeks now, like maybe he should be in an infirmary somewhere, I don’t know. He’s just a regular-looking thirty-something businessman who just happens to be drowning and choking on his snot every single day of his life, I guess. The days that we’re on the same trolley together, I usually spend the whole trip texting Henry in all capital letters because I am so repulsed and this is ALL HENRY’S FAULT and this is also totally why I ended up getting sick last week too! Anyway, this guy does the same thing in a cycle, for the whole trip: really moist, mucous-y cough followed by what sounds identical to snorting wet gravel and then noisily SWALLOWING IT. Oh you guys, it makes me so angry and yes, I have shot him dirty looks because MAYBE STAY HOME IF YOU’RE THAT SICK. Or learn how to blow your disgusting nose, you fucking cockpig.
• On Monday, I had to pee really bad but when I got to the bathroom, my zipper was stuck so I had to go into Wendy’s office and have her unzip me. And then I was like “DON’T LOOK!” and she was like, “I’m not looking, you idiot!”

• Kara met me downtown after work on Tuesday and we went to Butcher and the Rye for dinner and drinks but really just drinks. I am suddenly really into beets and they have a beet salad there so Kara got stoked about that too and we both ordered it but were pretty disappointed at the ironic lack of beets. I mean, there were SOME but definitely not $10 worth. The drinks made up for it, even though my first one had scotch in it and Kara said, “I have never been able to like scotch” and then I said out loud, “You know, I have no idea if I like scotch either.” Turns out, no. No, I don’t really like it. “This tastes like meat,” I said. And then Kara, who has known me for quite some time now, understood that to mean that my drink tasted smoky.
  • My second drink was a ramos gin fizz and basically this is all I want to drink now. Maple latte, who?
  • Kara had a crush on the bartender and was sad that he didn’t talk to us more. Not even when she was half-slung across the bar, staring at him with googly eyes. :(
• I cried so much while watching Gracepoint and the Red Band Society that I actually wondered if I was pregnant.
  • (I’m not.)
• This morning while getting ready for work, I heard on the radio that Mike + the Mechanics are doing a 30th anniversary tour and I got abnormally excited about this. I called Henry 8934897263 times to tell him but he ignored my call 8934897263 times so then I texted him in all capital letters and then he FINALLY called me back and when I told him, he calmly asked, “When is it?” and I yelled, “MARCH 13TH CAN WE GO!?!??” He was like, “I don’t know! It’s only Oct—-” and then I hung up.
  • My Pappap had the Living Years cassette in his car and several times, he mentioned to me that that song reminded him of his father. After my Pappap died in ’96, I would sometimes listen to “The Living Years” just to make myself feel even more pain. I still can’t hear that song without getting a burning lump in my throat and doing an ugly-cry.
  • “Silent Running,” tho.

• A few months ago, I had a strong desire to play Clue but then I bitched about how badly I hate the new version of it. I hate board game updates! Good thing I ended up not spending $25 on one that I hate, because I found this old ass version at the flea market last weekend! For $3!! It smells like mad men!
  • Also at the flea market, in the span of about 5 seconds, Chooch asked for a cat figurine and shot gun. And we all know he’s not going to be shooting the cat figurine.
• OMGOMGOMG the freakiest thing happened to me last night! So a few months ago, my friend Kristy asked for volunteers to be a part of her costume for this year’s Zombie Fest. I said yes before I even knew what the costume was, because Kristy is awesome. Turns out, it’s the Golden Girls! I get to be Rose (the only non-zombie one, so let’s pray that this doesn’t jinx the universe and if it does, BLAME KRISTY!) and of course I waited until a week before to go out and look for a Rose Nylund-esque dress. Last night at Goodwill, I snapped a picture of one that seemed acceptable and texted it to Kristy who said, yes, it was very Rose-worthy. So right when I was taking it up to the register, this happened:

Seriously, Henry and I just stopped and stared at each other like WTFFFF and then I was fumbling for my phone because I knew there’d be at least one INSTAVID OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. I’m not kidding though, my hands were shaking. What are the odds?!!? I think this was only the second time in my life that I heard any version of this song outside of a television set.

• When Henry texts “inside the grocery store” I assumed he really means “inside the greasy whore” BECAUSE HE’S CHEATING ON ME ISN’T HE.
• Last night, I saw previews for a new MTV reality show called Slednecks about ASSHOLES WHO LIVE IN ALASKA. Et tu, MTV?! All this Alaskan shit on the TV is killing me.

• Marcy is still my BFF, in case you were wondering.
• That time I couldn’t remember the spider’s name in Charlotte’s Web.
• Glenn fans: I made Glenn laugh 4 times today. Like, really laugh and not that annoyed scoff that he typically does! Having a newborn in the house is clearly making him delirious. I mean, we even googled “urns” together today. That’s a lot of interaction for us.
  • One of the times he laughed really hard was when he asked me if I go to a certain Pat Catan’s (craft store) and I said “No, I don’t like that one” and he was like, “What, why? It’s new and so big.” “I just get bad vibes there,” I shrugged, which is actually a pretty serious thing but he LAUGHED like it was was the quirkiest thing he had ever heard.

• Started putting up some of Halloween decorations at work today! Mean Amber and Glenn are thrilled. Amber said that Champion Materia Morticia book smells really bad SO DON’T SMELL IT if you come over here.
  • I have so much more work to do.
• Tell me something about yourself!

Blog title is self-explanatory, I guess.

• The other night, HENRY made me take the trolley home from work because once he picked Chooch from school, he had to take him back to work with him because [insert boring Faygo saga that I wasn’t listening to]. By the time I came home, I was starving and couldn’t wait another minute for Henry so I decided to do that cooking thing. We had leftover vegetarian baked beans in a bowl in the fridge, so I decided to go old school and make some veggie dogs to go with it. My first obstacle was trying to pry one of the veggie dogs from the frozen lump of fake meat I pulled from the freezer. I tried a sharp knife even though I’m technically not allowed to handle knives; I tried slamming it on the counter; I tried breaking it over my knee, black belt-style; I tried loosening it with my hot, fat tears of frustrating. Finally I just ran it under hot water until the whole block was soggy enough for me to free a meatless link. UGH, COOKING IS HARD WORK! After all that struggle, I decided to take a short-cut and instead of heating the veggie dog and baked beans separately, I plopped the dog in the pool of beans and put the whole thing in the microwave together. PRO TIP: Don’t do this. I wound up with a bowl of baked beans that were freezing cold on one side, piping hot on the other, and one decidedly frozen-in-the-middle veggie dog. At this point, I was ready to eat my hair, so I just sat down and ate it, as is. It was disgusting. Two minutes after I finished it, Henry and Chooch came home and I got the “WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST WAIT!?!?” lecture. And then instead of commending me on at least trying to do something for myself, he called me an idiot. :(
• So Glenn and his wife had a girl two weeks ago! I had like 4 separate group texts going on with various work-friends because it was a Really Big Deal! The other day, Michele asked me if Glenn was talking about the new baby a lot (sadly, NOT named Erin) and I just laughed. Glenn is still Glenn: a non-talker. Last night, Bridget and I were both on late shift and she asked me if Glenn at least has pictures of the baby on his desk. I hadn’t noticed, so when I went back  to my desk, I stopped to check, and no.
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  No pictures. Yet, he still has the dead bug that Catherine left him. On a napkin. I guess that’s as personal as his effects get.

• While in Chicago last weekend, we Skyped with Chooch. (He has Skype on xbox so he can do it right on the TV.) As soon as it connected, our first image of Chooch was of him standing there, in nothing but underwear, arms spread out and stretching a blanket across his back. “WHAT ARE YOU, BUFFALO BILL?!” I cried, like he knew what I was talking about, but still—it was scary! Meanwhile, Henry’s mom Judy was sitting on the couch behind him, taking this all in, probably thinking she was in an episode of the Jetsons: “HOW IS MY SON TALKING TO ME THROUGH THE TELEVISION!? WELL, I’LL BE!”

• Hey, speaking of Buffalo Bill! I got a custom request for a serial killer wedding card the other night. The guy said it was for his singer, but when I initially read it, I thought it said “sister,” so I didn’t think anything of it. But Henry gets all of the non compos cards stuff sent to his phone, too, and he read it correctly and then called me the next morning from work and said, “Did you happen to look at that guy’s name? I think it’s GG Allin’s brother.” And by golly, I think he’s right. I posted about it on Facebook and my friend Octavia was like, “This is really cool but just the thought of GG Allin makes my belly hurt” and I was like “I know right, am I supposed to poop on the card before I mail it?” But in all seriousness, I’m always happy to be connected in any way to bands/music industry. Back when my Somnambulant shop was really thriving (2007-2009), I sold a couple paintings to a girl who worked at Dischord Records and I embarrassingly fan-girled on her.
  • On a side-note, it was weird-timing because we had just seen Billy Bragg at Riot Fest, and while he was one of the few good things that I was able to take from my relationship with Psycho Mike, it was still kind of painful to see him singing in front of me;  GG Allin was also someone that Mike was really into (I wasn’t though), so there’s been a lot of heavy, dark nostalgia hanging over me this week.
  • But yeah, I’m excited (albeit pretty pressured) to make this card for Merle!
• Nice Amber¹ brought me back this adorable candy clown yesterday on her break! No way can I ever eat it; he’s too cute! Also, props to Amber for being a super FB-sleuth and finding out that Glenn is on there! Although, he only has like 17 friends and appears to use it even less than Henry uses his. However, Amber also found that Glenn participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and I was so giddy over this that I seriously almost peed my pants at work. Good job, Amber!!

• Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about how our trashy neighbor screamed in my face but then the next day, our nice neighbor came over and made me feel so much better about life? Well, I saw her the other morning when I was coming back from taking Chooch to school and she said, “I can’t get over how much you and [Chooch] look alike. He’s always making these faces at me and I just want to pinch his cheeks because he’s so cute and now I feel like I want to do that to you, too. But…that would be weird.”This neighbor can stay on my street forever.

• How weird would it be if I bought an extra Emarosa album and had a giveaway on here for it? THAT’S HOW MUCH I BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL ALL LOVE THIS ALBUM, YOU GUYS UGHHHHH. I just want everyone to own it.
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  What if I have a giveaway with that and also other things, too? Like a painting? And I have an extra BFF brain necklace set that I bought last year and the seller forgot to engrave it so she told me to just keep that set and  then she sent me a new one because she is awesome and makes really cute things and one of you should have this because it’s honestly just sitting in a drawer in my coffee table, sad that it doesn’t have a pair of BFFs to wear it.

• Man, we were at Goodwill a few weeks ago looking for old baby dolls (for a friend) and I totally regret not buying this book. #bowlcuts4everyone

• Last spring, my friend Alex started a project with me and several other awesome Pittsburgh bloggers and it’s finally come to fruition, so I’m excited to share that on here very soon!
• Chris (yes, the same one who ABANDONED us at the Law Firm) came over the other night and within minutes, Chooch poached her. She is his friend, now. They played Minecraft together, you guys, so it’s all over. And then last night he sighed and said, “I just want Chris to come over again.” GOD, GET YOUR OWN FRIENDS!!!!!! Meanwhile, Henry was just happy that someone was here distracting me and Chooch so he was able to sneak off and go to bed at some super early, old person hour.
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• I have so much to get done this weekend and all I want to do is sit under a blanket and watch horror movies. Also, since when are post-mortem photographs so expensive!?!? Prices have gone way up since I last bought one, damn.

Have a seriously delightful weekend, my little ladylocks and mancakes.

• Today I was thinking about how I haven’t been able to read a book, or even a MAGAZINE, in months because my head feels so fuzzy. And then that made me do a search on flotation therapy, which I have been casually considering trying for a few years now because…help. I feel like Spencer Chamberlain from Underoath did this before writing an album? But maybe I’m just thinking that because he has chamber in his last name.
• We went to a potluck last Saturday at our friends Tim and Patty’s house. Henry made a lemon chess pie (god, yes) and also a mac n cheese that had expensive cheese, porcini mushrooms, and pumpkin ale in it. I wanted him to substitute the porcini mushrooms with wood ear mushrooms, as an homage to Patty’s birthday dinner last winter at Hokkaido. God, that was a fun dinner! And the potluck on Saturday was fun too! We all gorged ourselves like it was goddamn Thanksgiving, and lived to regret nothing. (Except maybe bringing Chooch, who acted like a brat.)
• Here’s a really original bullet point: where the hell did this summer go? Just once I would like to see winter breeze past us in the same speedy fashion. Fuck you, winter.
• Henry and I engaged in one of my favorite activities late Sunday night: watching horror porn and talking about old stuff. He told me about this one time when his ex-wife spit in his face and now I’m obsessed with it and have made him repeat the story at least 6 times since then. Sunday night was really nice. I want more. HEAR THAT, HENRY?
• I had some quiet time on Saturday and I spent it re-watching Twin Peaks and painting some of the characters. I’m really excited about this series of paintings! Twin Peaks was so great. I’ll post more about that later.
• Today, I made the last payment on our Riot Fest tickets! Ahhhhh! One more week! Every time I think about it, I get so emotional that I start to cry and Henry is just like, “Please kill me.”
• Henry and I have been heavily embroiled in a “To Pie Party or Not to Pie Party” debate. I think we’re, sadly, leaning toward “not to pie party.” Last year’s piestivies took so much out of me.
  • I have a theme though, in case I change my mind at the last minute.
• The day I learned that the game I played in elementary school gym class was actually called “Bombardment” and not “Bob Barker,” my whole world changed. It was almost as mind-blowing when I learned to read and realized that it was “grilled cheese” and not “girl cheese.” How stupid I felt about yelling at all those boys eating sandwiches I thought were for GIRLS ONLY. :(
  • The “Bombardment” awakening was honestly only a few years ago. I’m not embarrassed to tell you guys that.
• The other night, I told Chooch that I was pregnant and he got so excited. HAHA. I love doing that to him. But then he was like, “I knew you weren’t really pregnant because you’re way too skinny.” YOU GUYS. No one has ever, in my entire life, used the words “way too skinny” to describe me. CHOOCH, I FUCKING LOVE YOU. Even if I did have another baby, you would still be my favorite!

• Yesterday was one of those days when I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted. I thought that I wanted ice cream. But then we got to the ice cream place, I decided I didn’t see anything there that I wanted and Henry was like, “$#!&^@#$!” so Chooch got a hot dog and then, without saying a word, Henry drove to another ice cream place, where Chooch ordered a sundae and I decided that there still wasn’t anything that I wanted and that I felt so RUSHED to decide. Henry looked around exaggeratedly and said, “Who’s rushing there? There isn’t anybody else here!!” So we sat down at a table and watched Chooch eat his sundae and then I decided that maybe I wanted something but I wasn’t sure what, so I sent Henry back to the window to ask the ice cream lady a million questions on my behalf before finally settling on a strawberry shortcake which was pretty good but kind of not what I wanted at all! AND THEN I GOT SICK. Probably I just shouldn’t have ordered anything, if we’re being real with each other, because I was in a very Sybil-esque mood and nothing was going to make me happy.
  • While eating a sundae I didn’t want, I was watching people at the ice cream place. “I love how that lady is juggling a baby, an ice cream cone AND trying to get money out of her purse at the same time, yet her dad is over there barking at her to get more napkins. Get it yourself, motherfucker. Am I right?”Henry frowned and sadly said, “Yeah except…that’s what you guys do to me.”

• I got to see my old high school friend Stacey last week! She commissioned a painting from me for her baby’s nursery so when I brought it to her house, I got to see 3 of her 4 kids and it was wildly entertaining! (No sarcasm, seriously.) It made me kind of regret stopping at just one but now as I sit here typing this, my “One” is upstairs having a meltdown so those regrets are gone.
• Emarosa released a stream of their entire album yesterday and obviously I am smitten. I wish I knew how to say in English what they mean to me, instead of just hugging myself and making heart-eyes at everything. Because…that doesn’t translate well over the Internet. It’s interesting how some bands just hit that emotional sweet spot, and Emarosa is definitely one of those bands for me. We gots history, y’all. And it’s ironic to me that this has been the Summer of Emarosa, when I needed them the most. They sound-tracked yet another chapter to our story. You know, the one where the maids always win and the Queen loses her head. Sigh. I can tell this album is going to be my security blanket. I better buy two copies…
  • Poor Henry has been taking the brunt of this. I would be imploding if it wasn’t for him. <3
  • Except that he made my C-section incision hurt last night and then yelled at me when I said it hurt because supposedly since it’s been 8 years, it shouldn’t hurt anymore or something?! Ugh, fuck you, Henry. He was like, “Thank god it wasn’t a vaginal birth. We never would have had sex again.” He’s not wrong.
  • He just walked past me and shook his head because I’m listening to Emarosa again and making sad faces. SAD ERIN IS SAD OK.
• We were playing this game on xbox, Fibbage, on Sunday, where you make up lies to questions and then everyone has to guess which is the truth. One of the questions was something like “Who were people lobbying to get taxed because they are so annoying?” and Henry’s lie was “Erin Kelly.” :(
  • The actual answer was “hipsters.”
• Henry drove me to work today (yay!) and I freaked out because I thought I saw Knight from the Real World. Turns out it was not Knight from the Real World.
• And to cap off the day, I just came home from a coffee date/therapy session/laughathon with my friend Lisa and I gotta tell you, I feel a lot better about life right now. Everyone needs a friend like Lisa. We talked about the one time we went to the arts festival when we were 18 or 19 with two kids from her youth group and I gave them a cigarette when Lisa wasn’t looking and then pretended I didn’t know how young they were. “Yeah, and you were also flirting with one them the whole time,” Lisa sighed. TYPICAL ERIN, AMIRITE.

• OK. Thanks to the pumpkin spice horchata latte I guzzled at 8:30pm, I’m going to spend the next 3 hours painting more Twin Peaks characters. So far I have Log Lady, Agent Dale Cooper, Dead Laura Palmer and Doctor Jacoby! BUBBBYE.

• This summer has been weird. I’m still slightly disoriented because CHANGE and there also has been a void since I vowed to back off from county fairs since I almost died at one last summer. County fairs were my summertime livelihood and I have felt so empty these last few months.  And then we just haven’t had many free weekends to go toall of the small amusement parks like we usually do and Henry has been all “CONCERTS OR AMUSEMENT PARKS, PICK ONE” because he is theSTINGIEST DAD EVER. Fuck you, Henry.
  • But…at least it’s almost fall! And fall is always good. One day a few weeks ago, it was really chilly when I was outside on my break, and I swear I could smell fall in the air. It was amazing and made me smile, which probably looked annoying to all of the people around me who had Work Face on.
• Remember the Supposed Bomber? SAW HIM AGAIN TODAY! This time it was under a bridge and he looked like he was thinking about jumping into the river.
• 

• Robin Williams. Fuck,I’ve been trying to avoid this. I was with my friendElissa when I found out. It was last Monday evening and I had met her while she was out walking her dog,in order to give her Gina’s birthday present. About a minute before we parted ways, my friend Nina texted me and all it said was “Oh no, not Mrs.Doubtfire!” Somehow, I knew exactly what this meant but still thought to myself, “No.” As soon as I said goodbye toElissa, I pulled up Facebook (always the credible news source, right?) and one by one, people started posting links from ACTUAL credible news sources, confirming that it was true. It’s been a long time since I felt that up-ended over a celebrity’s death. Definitely not since Elliott Smith’s suicide/homicide in 2003 (it’s still a grisly mystery).
  • And before that, it wasTupac and Gianni Versace.
    • I was obsessed with Versace when I was in high school. My friend Lisa was actually the one who broke the news to me. She called me from the people’s house she nannied for (oh hay, awkward syntax, I still got it) and was like, “OMG I hate to be the one to tell you this, but…” I will never forget it: I was using the wall phone in the laundry room and literally slid down the wall until I was in a crumpled heap of despair on the floor. I watched a lot of Days of Our Lives back then, so I was theatrically prepared for this moment.
  • The very next morning, I was getting ready for work and Elliott Smith’s “Angeles” came on my Spotify playlist and of course the album cover is a picture of Matt Damon and Robin Williams from “Good Will Hunting” so I started crying my dumb cat eyes right off my face.
    • I have a lot to say about mental illness. How I can relate. How it doesn’t matter how many people are like, “I love you and you mean something to this world.” Sometimes, you just fucking feel really alone. Even in a roomful of people, I just feel really fucking alone. Not glorifying suicide, but I get it. I also get that there are ways to change it. And I have always opted to fight, because I’m a stubborn fucking bitch and that’s what we do. We fight and we get by. And sometimes we have to ask for help. I wear one of my To Write Love on Her Arms bracelets almost every day. It’s a good reminder. It’s Zoloft on my arm.
  • When Terri and Christian were here, we had a lengthy convo about Robin Williams movies while standing in the middle of the Exchange. I think we were trying to remember the name of Patch Adams, and Terri said that “Awakenings” is one of her favorite movies and I said that I had only seen it once, a long time ago, and that I would have to watch it again real soon. The day before that, we were in Dave’s Music Mine, and I held up the soundtrack for The Mirror Has Two Faces and admitted that I not only own it, but I still fucking love that Bryan Adams/Barbra Streisand duet from it. A little more than a week later, Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall (who was in The Mirror Has Two Faces!!!!) both died. TERRI AND I ARE KILLING PEOPLE.
  • I realized over the weekend that Chooch has never seen a Robin Williams movie, so I made him watch “Hook,” which I randomly selected on Netflix. He was pretty entranced throughthe whole thing, but at the end, at the VERY end, he stood up and cried, “Oh, some kid’s movie, MOMMY. There were stabbings and some kid died. A KID DIED. Yeah, great kids movie!” and then he stormed off.
    • Aside from that, he was convinced that the Lost Boys were shouting “bangarang” because of Skrillex.
  • No Robin Williams Glenns have been made yet. Too soon. But one day it will be time, and I will make a glorious collage of all the best Robin Williams. Because just one isn’t good enough. Not for him. :(
• Henry makes me a sandwich for lunch every day so that I won’t roam around downtown, playing tug-of-war with pigeons for bread. But yesterday, something felt off. The sandwich felt flatter yet heavier. I took it out of the Ziploc and it was soggy on one side, like practically wet. I smelled it, but my sense of smell is weird and I just couldn’t place it. I took a cautious bite and threw it to the side. Even the inside was wet! It felt heavy like a PB&J, but it wasn’t that! I texted Henry, panicked that I grabbed the wrong sandwich and I was eating some disgusting creation ofChooch’s BECAUSE WHO KNOWS WHAT HE DOES WHILEJUDY IS WATCHING HIM. Anyway, it turns out it was fig and cream cheese which is definitely something weird that I would like but I guess because I’m so used to cheese and fake meat everyday, I just wasn’tprepared. Similar to have something slipped in the wrong—-well, you get the idea. I was so angry about this sandwich, even after discussing with Chris how delicious figs and goat cheese sounds, that I totally laid into Henry when he picked me up from work and made sure he understood that he was never going to win Master Chef if he kept making me wet sandwiches with mystery ingredients. And then he was like, “YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN SANDWICHES FROM NOW ON.”
  • But guess what I’m eating right now? A cheese and fake meat sandwich that Henry made for me. Good one, Henry.
    • Today’s sandwich is fantastic, btw.
• Henry and I watched a series of Mr. Mister videos on YouTube last Friday. #foreplay And that’s how I learned that the first CD he ever bought was one of their albums! I can just hear him telling his mom about it. “Mommy, I bought this really swell compact disc by a musical group called The Mr. Misters!” And then feeling uncomfortable when “Broken Wings” comes on and he has a boner.
• All summer long, we were under the impression that Chooch goes back to school after Labor Day. Butthen Judy was talking to one of the neighbors and it came up off-handedly that school starts next Monday. So she told Henry and me and we were like, “No, that person is wrong because it’s after Labor Day” but then we decided to open the back to school packet that came in the mail and oh—it’s Monday. I guess that’s what we get for going by an 8-year-old’s word.
  • Guess who’s going back-to-school shopping tonight?
• I am unable to process everything that’s happening in Ferguson, but thank god Henry pretends to listen to me rant about it.
• On a lighter note, Mean Amber found this big bug thing on the floor so Catherine decided to leave it on Glenn’s desk, which is hilar but you KNOW that when he comes in tomorrow morning, I’m going to be the #1 suspect. And he gets here 2 and a half hours before me, which is ample time for him to retaliate. So…great guys. JUST GREAT.

• I kept stalking Wendy’s office because she told me the other day, “OH YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING IN MY FRUIT BOWL, FRIEND!” But whenever I would go over there, someone was always in there talking to her so then I’d go over and stand in front of Barb’s desk looking sad. So Barb tried to office me a plum and I snapped, “I DON’T WANT A PLUM I WANT A PLUOT!” Because those bitches are good. So finally I caught Wendy alone and said, “I don’t want to talk, I just came for some fruit!” and she was all gracious and sharing about it, but then all she had was an apple and some cuties! I took a cutie, but made sure to spit, “THANKS, BUT I WANTED A PLUOT” before storming back to my desk. UGHHHHH. TERRIBLE DAY.
• Last week, Chooch called a group of jaywalkers “a big dumb pile of bitches.” WHERE DOES HE GET IT WHO KNOWS.

And I will leave you with “Angeles” by Elliott Smith. The very thought of this song in my head makes me tear up.

I know. Motivationless isn’t a word. I get it. I scored a perfect on that dumb vocabulary quiz that’s going around Facebook, so there. But for the sake alliteration, god forbid, it is now.

Ugh. Anyway, here are some pictures of shit that’s been going that doesn’t involve my mind birthing droves of emo bands. That is to say: be thankful if you’re not Henry because I have been all kinds of hyper-dramatic and whiny lately.

1. PROJECTS:

I can’t tell you how many unfinished projects we’ve got laying around the house: things that need put together, things that need hung on the wall, things that are only half-painted. But, this is the age of Pinterest so I’m willing to wager that 80% of the people reading this are probably nodding their heads right now. BECAUSE YOU KNOW. I’ve been cracking down on this shit though, and I got Henry to finally take down the dingey dining room light that came with the house and, up until last week, had four different light bulbs in it, including those spiral-y lights that are so great for the environment but ugly as fuck. Anyway, the only solution I could see to dressing this bitch up was to spraypaint it with purple glitter and buy pretty light bulbs for it. And, since this was a light fixture that we needed reinstalled sooner rather than later, Henry actually got it done super fast and it looks like gorgeous, guys. Liberace would be proud:

Next up was this old Coca-Cola crate that I bought at a flea market in 2009 and has been sitting on a windowsill behind curtains ever since I finished painting it. Henry finally hung it up and now it doubles as a shelf! (Not shown: the two empty embalming fluid bottles which now perch majestically upon the crate’s lip.) I’m so happy it finally has a place!

 2. Marcy

Because…Marcy. <3

3. Super Stoked for Sibling Sesh!

My brother Corey recently came back from a kayaking adventure in Montana, so we met up last week at Gianna Via’s to talk about it over some dinner. I had a pumpkin martini and it was great, but now I’m in an autumn mindset and want to go to haunted houses STAT. Anyway, Corey has this really loud, boisterous laugh sometimes and it came out a lot over dinner, which instantly put me in the best mood. KELLY SIBS, WHUT:

4. Weird Fruit

One of my co-workers bought a pint of ground cherries at the farmer’s market that happens downtown once a week. She told me she only bought them because there were two hipster guys buying an armful of them, like it’s the Pabst of produce. They told her that they love ground cherries because they taste like pineapples and vanilla, depending on which hipster you were asking. I was really anxious to try one and it excited me that each one came swathed in some weird paper-like wrapper that first needed to be peeled off. At first I was like FUCK YES this is great and I emailed the bearer of ground cherries to express to her my gratitude for the gift of fruit. I ended the email with #blessed but then deleted it because who knows. She told me to just take them because no one else liked them. I thought they were great, I said! But then the more I ate, the more I realized they tasted like semi-sweet tomatillas and now I don’t like them anymore.

5. Geese Police:

Apparently in Pittsburgh, this is a necessary thing.

 6. Zombie Luau!

I met Kristy at a zombie luau this past Saturday night. My work friend Patty was also there so that was nice. She even scored me a cigarette later in the night, which Kristy and I passed back and forth at the bar like we were in 7th grade, smoking in the locker room. So sad.

Kristy went as a zombie tiki cocktail. I went as a casual passer-by with a limp, because I didn’t have it in to me to throw together a costume and I had hurt my foot earlier that day in the cemetery. There was a hula hooping contest, which Kristy got suckered into but I ran away because no. It was the after party for Horror Realm, which is a horror convention here in Pittsburgh. Lew Temple was hanging out, and I was internally very excited about this but I don’t really know why?

And thank god, Frankenberry was there! (Spoiler Alert: he won the costume contest.)

7. Mike the High Waiter

Hey man, I’ve been meaning to finish recapping the time I got to spend with my pals Terri and Christian a few weeks ago, but I think I’ve been suffering some sort of withdrawals. I hate goodbyes! But anyway, the last night they were here, we all went to dinner at the Double Wide Grill which has a decent meatless offering. Henry was concerned because the few times we had gone there in the past, we had horrendous service. But I figured enough time had past that we should be in the clear.

Wrong.

Our waiter Mike stumbled over to us and began mumbling incoherently about the weather while essentially pretending to take our drink orders. I’d like to have seen what he was actually writing on his pad, I have a feeling it was akin to the clock that Will Graham draws in “Hannibal.”

After coughing on the side of Terri’s neck 4 times, he did a quick shuffle away from our table before getting everyone’s drink order, and we all just kind of  sat there stunned.

“Well….I’m glad this at least wasn’t your FIRST impression of Pittsburgh?” I threw out there hopefully.

Then we got a new waiter and figured Mike was probably puking on some homeless guy’s cardboard house by then. 

Terri and I both ordered a vegetarian TV dinner, which was novel and mostly good. I was mad because the grits in the picture on the menu had blueberries on them, not cheese. BUT WHATEVER. I think my favorite part of the dinner was watching Christian longingly eye up the puzzles on Chooch’s placemat, before finally snatching up a crayon and solving one of the word scrambles with great satisfaction and relief.

Afterward, we walked to the Milkshake Factory, because that’s where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes used to go when Tom was here filming “Jack Reacher” so that seemed like a good tourist attraction, somehow. I’m really bad at this.

Then Chooch became obsessed with karate and wanted to pose for a picture in front of some studio with some Happy Buddha statue, which he pointed out has “man boobs like Henry.”

“Dude,” Terri laughed at Henry. “You’re a saint!”

“Here’s Henry,” Christian said pointing at a spot on the wall. “And here’s the rest of the world,” he pointed to his umbrella, before beating the aforementioned “Henry” spot on the wall. And even Henry laughed at that, because it’s true!

I miss those guys!